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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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httos://archive.org/details/christianitystatOOcadm 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


WILLIAM OwEN: A BIOGRAPHY. 


CHARLES DARWIN AND OTHER ENGLISH THINKERS. 


THe THREE ReLiIGious LEADERS oF OxFORD AND 
THEIR MovEMENTS. 


AMBASSADORS OF Gop. 





erry | i ra’ 
’ i wr 4 : 
Poo LeLyZi 


CHRISTIANITY AND eat seed 
THE STATE 


BY 
S. PARKES CADMAN 


A series of lectures delivered before the Pacific 
School of Religion, Berkeley, California, during the 
Spring of 1922, upon the Earl Foundation 


Nem York 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1924 


All rights reserve d 


Coprricat, 1924, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1924. 


Printed in the United States of America 


Ceo 
MR. AND MRS. HARRY ANSON MOODY 


OF DOUGLASTON MANOR, PULASKI, NEW YORK 
IN GRATEFUL RECOGNITION OF 
THEIR UNFAILING KINDNESS TO 
THE AUTHOR 


‘‘WuerE there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much 
arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but 
knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrors of sect and 
schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and 
understanding which God hath stirr’d up in this City. What some 
lament of, we rather should rejoyce at, should rather praise this pious 
forwardness among men, to reassume the ill deputed care of their Reli- 
gion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little 
forbearance of one another, and som grain of charity might win all 
these diligences to joyn and unite in one generall and brotherly search 
after Truth, could we but forgoe this Prelaticall tradition of crowding 
free consciences and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. 
I doubt not, if som great and worthy stranger should come among us, 
wise to discern the mould and temper of a people and how to govern it, 
observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended 
thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of truth and freedom, but 
that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility 
and courage. If such were my Epirots, I would not despair the greatest 
design that could be attempted, to make a Church or Kingdom happy.” 

JoHN Mitton: Areopagitica. 


PREFACE 


Tus volume contains the substance of several lectures de- 
livered during Lent, 1922, at the Pacific School of Religion, 
Berkeley, California, upon the Earl Foundation provided for 
that purpose. I trust their essence harmonizes with the 
religion of inwardness and freedom which was first revealed 
by our Lord in Galilee, and afterward proclaimed by His 
Apostles throughout the Greco-Roman world. I have in- 
tended the position these lectures assume, the ideals they 
defend and any modifications they suggest, to be subordinate 
to the teachings of that great religion, the center and life of 
which are in “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and 
forever.” 

Faith in Him, with the rights such faith includes, should 
not be left at the mercy of external authority, however deeply 
intrenched. Neither should it be subjected to the vagaries 
of theological controversy, however sincerely waged. Never- 
theless, its historic, institutional and doctrinal forms in the 
Christian Ecclesia, and also in some phases of the nominally 
Christian State, are of first rate importance as testimony to 
the indispensability of original Christianity itself. I have 
therefore emphasized the characteristic benefits derived 
from a scrutiny of organized religion in its relations to the 
political State. 

The treatment of so vast and intricate a theme in a neces- 
sarily fragmentary manner exposes the writer to the charge 
of naming subjects which are not explored with thoroughness 
and precision. The omission is in part enforced and in part 
deliberate. In so far as it is the latter, it is prompted by the 
hope that what is here set down may induce the reader to 
define afresh his personal knowledge of the annals of Church 
and State. For other but equally cogent reasons, the separa- 

vil 


Vill PREFACE 


tion between theology and the science of history has been 
respected. One can, in the words of Hazlitt, ‘endeavor to 
feel what is good, and to give a reason for the faith that is in 
him,” without carrying the selections into the troubled area 
of doctrinal differences. It must also be owned that in the 
case before us criticism has been animated by one’s devout 
gratitude for the lasting gains that Christianity has con- 
ferred, not only upon the State, but upon the whole course of 
civilization. That gratitude has perhaps neutralized the 
consciousness that much so-called religious history is pre- 
judiced in statement, prone to exaggeration and irreligious in 
temper. A salutary change makes recent contributions con- 
spicuous by contrast, and may well be a prophecy of Chris- 
tianity’s renewed approach toward the unity of the Spirit in 
the bond of peace. 

The patient survey of broad historical spaces, the analysis 
of their component elements, the reappraisal of premature 
judgments, the accurate observance and description of fa- 
mous individuals or leading events are the tasks of competent 
scholars who enjoy literary leisure. Yet ministers involved 
in an incessant round of clerical duties need to understand 
the interactions of Church and State. They should be able 
to give an account of nationalism and internationalism, as 
these have affected the history of the Faith which is ordained 
for the purification of human society. They can be confident 
that there lies deep in the hearts of all Christian people a 
keen desire to apprehend at closer range the historic achieve- 
ments of their religion. The Psalmist’s preference is still 
dear to them: ‘“‘T have considered the days of old, the years of 
ancient times. I will remember the years of the right hand 
of the Most High. I will remember thy wonders of old.” } 
Nor is this practice the less commendable because it exhorts 
us to hopefulness, forbearance and a more comprehensive 
charity. At every stage of the retrospective process we see 
the better future arising from the dying past; the entwining 

1 Psalm LXXVII: 5, 10, 11. 


PREFACE ix 


of what has been with what is to be, the persistent continuity 
with which opposing theories and parties complement each 
other. 

Science, as Dean Stanley observed, may direct the preacher 
to wider horizons. Philosophy may penetrate for him pro- 
founder springs of thought and action. Poetry may kindle 
in him loftier fires and enrich his speech with more telling 
phrases. But history should rivet his attention and con- 
centrate his energies because it aids him in the solution of 
those ever recurring problems which were seldom more in- 
surgent than they are now. It was said of Richard William 
Church by one who knew him intimately that had he been 
“less strenuous in his effort to be just to all men, he never 
could have borne the part and left the mark he did.”’ The 
historical spirit was the finest result of his consecrated 
scholarship. It was felt “‘in the way he spoke of men, in 
the weight he gave to the considerations which might fairly 
weigh with others, in the large allowance he would always 
make for the vast diversity of men’s gifts and opportunities, 
for the inscrutable depth of every human life, for the unknown 
hindrances and difficulties and discouragements through 
which those who seem to advance slowly may be winning a 
heroic way.” * If we can but imitate the example of Dean 
Church, we may cherish the expectation that the unification 
of Churches shall precede that of States, and that righteous- 
ness and good will shall yet abound in the earth. To this 
end, Christians of every persuasion will have to realize 
afresh the forms, and use the means, and value the lessons 
of that living Ecclesia which enshrines the power and wisdom 
of the living God. 

I am deeply indebted to the Reverend Herbert B. Work- 
man, Litt.D., Principal of Westminster Training College, 
London, England; the Reverend Oscar L. Joseph, Litt.D.; 
Professor Thomas Sharper Knowlson; the Reverend William 


2** Life and Letters of Dean Church,” edited by his daughter, Mary C. 
Church, p. xx ff. 


x PREFACE 


S. Winans, M. A.; and the Reverend Albert 8. Morris, for 
their generous assistance in revising and correcting the 
manuscript of these chapters. I also gratefully acknowl- 
edge here the very considerable help and guidance I have 
received, not only from the volumes mentioned in the Bib- 
liography and the references, but from contributions in 
“The London Times Literary Supplement,’ ‘‘The London 
Spectator” and other ably conducted and responsible jour- 
nals. Many valuable ideas and suggestions have been ob- 
tained from the two weeklies named, which are competent 
guides in historical matters. 
S. PARKES CADMAN. 


Central Congregational Church, 
Brooklyn, New York City. 
October 15, 1923. 


CONTENTS 


FIRST LECTURE 


PAGE 
PSEA L WVOd V. OLCHIS feo ee i a es Shee Lae ett Tae Wako Ua Th 3 
SECOND LECTURE 
EP ACTOA NT) ER ESBIN Dia eae aries) a era CRA COR ME aA 43 
THIRD LECTURE 
THe GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE..........0-0--- 79 
FOURTH LECTURE 
HEP NIODERNG TATHU Hi yaiois ed let ae ule cena ae bialye 
FIFTH LECTURE 
(DEER CUITIZENCAN DTH EN DATION oe oR we 2 ui) en aaulamane nts 149 
SIXTH LECTURE 
THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE Two EMPIRES............ 183 
SEVENTH LECTURE 
THe CoLuAPsSE OF Mrpia@vau IMPERIALISM................ 229 
EIGHTH LECTURE 
PPE EIGE, OF IN ATIONALIGMC ME id hts sitet ets a) hatte a a RED 273 
NINTH LECTURE 
THe CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM; ........0.0cccecccece Ste 
MAESTET OGRA PHY. ure en eaten eek Searels mie re oat here ae 355 
TNT ete en EE Ww J let ee ale erctd ie epee 363 


FIRST LECTURE 
THE TWO VOICES 


‘“Oh! we’re sunk enough here, God knows! 
But not quite so sunk that moments, 
Sure though seldom, are denied us, 
When the spirit’s true endowments 
Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
And apprise it if pursuing 
Or the right way or the wrong way, 
To its triumph or undoing.” 
RosBertT Brownine: Christina. 


“There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and no 
kind is without signification. If then I know not the meaning of the 
voice, I shall be to him that speaketh a barbarian, and he that speaketh 


will be a barbarian unto me.”’ 
I Corinthians xiv. 10, 11. 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


FIRST LECTURE 
THE TWO VOICES 


The world outlook is one of darkness and despair to materialistic in- 
terpreters — Those who reckon with God and immortality, in the light of 
our Lord Jesus Christ and of all history, reach a more adequate conclu- 
sion concerning human destiny — The chronic antagonism between 
these two views constitutes the problem of the ages — The voice of 
Faith is more vibrant and penetrating than the voice of Fear, because 
inspired by the Gospel of the Incarnation — The economic situation 
should be viewed from the standpoint of eternal justice and love — A 
reappraisal of the manifold issues of war is an urgent and timely de- 
mand — The Church must offer the final solution of the problem of 
world peace — Secularism ends in a cul de sac, while the spiritual 
idealism of Christian believers leads to the City of God. 


Tue world wears a tragic aspect for those who mistake 
their own unbelief and despair for a universal state, and 
who speak as though humanity had fallen into irremediable 
ruin. To them the past is a series of blunders and crimes 
encumbering the present with their fatal heritage; the 
future foredoomed to failure. This thoroughgoing pes- 
simism, which has always pervaded some minds, was greatly 
intensified and diffused by the late war. Notwithstand- 
ing the sufferings that war inflicted upon guilty and in- 
nocent alike, it has left peace exceedingly precarious. The 
spirit of Nationalism has revived and there seems to be no 
exorcise for it. Armaments are being adapted to more deadly 
methods of conflict. Dissensions prevail between the con- 
querors and the conquered. Civil strife is imminent in not a 
few countries, and in nearly all lands antagonistic groups 

3 


4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


imperil the safety of the State. Religious or racial prejudice 
poisons the life of communities and cities. The tenacious 
retention of wealth is countered by greed for its acquisition. 
Capitalists and industrialists think in terms too restricted for 
the public good. Strikes and lockouts, riots and conspiracies, 
terrorisms and massacres kindle further discontent and 
anarchy. The Christian habit of life is often forsaken; and 
men are too much confined to their own resources, which, 
though immense, are never.enough for their actual demands. 
The combative instincts that produce war-mentality show 
few signs of abatement in some leaders of public opinion. 
The law of our Lord that we should love our enemies is 
abrogated. ‘The Mosaic law, ‘‘An eye for an eye, and a 
tooth for a tooth,’ governs in its sinister insistence the claims 
and counter-claims of classes and nations. Christ obviously 
intended His law to prevail in human intercourse; but those 
who are infected by the virus of militarism, either construe 
that law under nullifying limitations, or openly disparage it. 
Their enemies have only to be sufficiently brutal to justify 
brutality everywhere, and thus release Christian peoples 
from an obligation proclaimed by the Church as an essential 
of their Faith. 

In truth, warnings against war are heard on all sides, and 
its irreparable disasters are vividly portrayed. But too many 
politicians and statesmen and the majority of soldiers of 
high rank believe it to be inevitable. This separation of the 
pacifist from the military mind resembles that of the Hellenis- 
tic States, which for centuries squandered their manhood and 
their treasure in civil strife. Rejecting the counsel of a few 
enlightened patriots who foresaw the fatal consequences of 
the policy, they renewed their quarrels, and within seventy 
years from the time the remonstrance was made, all these 
States had succumbed to the sword of Rome. A similar 
fanatical devotion to war at the risk of national and inter- 
national well-being is rampant in certain groups of our own 
time. Their contention is that forcible self-assertion is the 


THE TWO VOICES 5 


one needful, concrete, victorious quality. War is life, and 
when the will to fight ceases, life ceases. Concord through 
justice is an iridescent dream. Right and the freedom that 
right bestows are well enough for the individual, but they are 
only beguiling fancies so far as intercourse of States is con- 
cerned. Unrepentant nationalism comes into the picture 
before us, and protests against even elementary measures 
required for the world’s peace. These opinions imply the 
denial of an intelligible moral purpose in history. Those who 
hold them maintain that since every form of civilisation is of 
brief duration, armed violence in the struggle for survival is 
the sole possible alternative. The very dead are invoked in 
behalf of the bomb and the bayonet which dismissed them 
out of life. Friends and foes who now rest together on the 
battlefields of Europe and Asia, and in the depths of the sea, 
could they speak, would bid all peoples seek peace and pursue 
it. But the departed are exploited by responsible officials of 
the State and by its citizens who still believe in retributive 
emotion, and in the efficaciousness of brute force. The 
monstrous iniquity which robbed them of their youth is 
placed beneath the sanction of millions of the slain who 
cannot disown it from their graves. It is not surprising that 
some writers detect, as they believe, the evidences of ultimate 
decline in the white race. The sophistication of human life, 
the abandonment of its real values, its appetite for carnal 
things, the credulity of its cults, the complexes injected into 
it by the irreconcilable elements of cities and of hostile States 
are enumerated at length to prove that modern civilization is 
slipping toward the gulf. 

These aspects of human life admittedly give point to the 
vessimist’s plea. Notwithstanding the better self of nations, 
they seem to be dedicated to flagrant evils. His complaint is 
upheld by the lack of leadership in nearly every realm, and 
by the resultant babel of advices which frequently expresses 
the shattered state of the contemporary mind. Ideas that 
devour one another fly abroad as swiftly as swallows, and in 


6 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


as many directions. The voice of Despair challenges the 
voice of Faith. It tells us that none is wise or brave enough 
to analyze and remove the ills that vex the world. Many 
philosophers, psychologists, biologists, moralists, journalists, 
and occasionally, clergymen, make common cause with 
radical skepticism about the impossibility of future good. 
Science, which has done marvellous things, is left comfortless 
in their midst because of its materialistic conclusions. It 
traces man from his genesis in organized matter only to leave 
him stranded in a universe which is slowing down. In all life 
there is no valid refutation of death; infinite, silent, lifeless 
space is its final goal. Man is ona blind bypath ending in 
pitiful and brief delirium, in dust and then — nothingness. °* 
The speculation vouches for Schopenhauer’s description of 
life as a “‘uselessly interrupting episode in the blissful repose 
of nothing.”” We are told to set our house in order by deny- 
ing all forms of existence other than those guaranteed by 
physics and chemistry. Palpable material characteristics and 
qualities are preferable to any of the imaginary existences 
vaguely defined as spiritual. Ghosts, gods, souls and the 
religions that cluster around them are outcasts among 
advanced thinkers. The intelligent creature who has delved 
into these mysteries of the physical universe is himself no 
more than a cunning combination of protein molecules. 
Speculative analysts whose books are widely read, deal with 
the incalculable expenditures of cosmic energy extending 
through aeons, the duration of which was but momentary 
when measured by the chronometers of the creative process. 
They insist that the outcome will be chaos; that the com- 
paratively insignificant solar system in which our planet 
is a minor star has already banked its fires for the approach- 
ing night. The reasoning mind that interprets the cosmos is 
only love’s labor lost. Pen and ink Napoleons of this species 
of scientific materialism and philosophic pessimism gravely 
inform us that the progress man has made is a lure, like that 
of the carrot hung in front of the ass to coax him along. Thus 


THE TWO VOICES t 


do the apostles of annihilation preside at the obsequies of our 
dearest hopes and swell the chorus of despair. 

This extinction of the higher forms of existence leaves its 
lower forms in possession of the field. What further systems 
and worlds, forms of life and intelligence, may be evolved 
by the ceaseless revolutions of matter and energy are entirely 
conjectural. It is sufficient to know that destruction is the 
sure assignment of those that we observe. Not all scientists 
and thinkers, however, demand so abject a surrender of 
reason and morality. A large and influential school concedes 
that the ideas of God, righteousness and immortality must 
be retained. The conceptions of physical knowledge are not 
comparable, it is said, with those that postulate the suprem- 
acy of spiritual realities. And although there can be no 
scientific basis for religion, and faith must always remain the 
sole source of religious development, it is not to be treated 
lightly, nor cast aside. Science tolerates it as not necessarily 
incompatible with the knowledge derived from logical deduc- 
tions that deal with facts originating in sense perceptions. 
Perhaps we should be thankful for the mercy which relegates 
religion to a realm equal with that of scientific research. 
Small as such mercy is, it measurably neutralizes the in- 
solence of the materialistic theories that have been men- 
tioned.! 

A different kind of pessimism is purveyed by publicists and 
authors who before 1914 assumed that the march to Paradise 
had well begun. Since the march into Belgium they are sure 
of nothing save the arrest of a progress they once described as 
automatic. The printing press pours out volumes of a more 
or less biological complexion, which maintain that whatever 
becomes of his physical being, man’s moral decay has set in. 
As humanity increases in quantity, it proportionately de- 
creases in quality. Works upon racial decadence are seriously 


1 Cf. for a more extended view of this issue, Sir Henry Jones: “A Faith 
that Enquires,’’ especially Lecture VI upon “ Scientific Hypothesis and 
Religious Faith.” 


8 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


received. The cave man and the crowd man loom up in the 
apprehension of readers who know little about biology 
except these dismal lucubrations. Economic disaster nat- 
urally follows upon the heels of social disintegration. Polit- 
ical problems, we are assured, have outstripped statesmen 
who are not less capable than were their predecessors. But 
the obstacles to efficient administration exceed all previous 
dimensions, and few precedents are obtainable for their 
removal. Moralists depict the oncoming orgy of animalism 
to which some fiction and drama cater. Premillenarians 
believe the present order is anathema to God, and can only 
be cured of its diseases by His miraculous intervention. 
Highly colored prophecies of the approaching end of the age 
play a prominent part in the religious rituals of despair. 
It haunts Church and State, its statements are cleverly con- 
cocted, its inferences sound plausible even though their note 
is stormy. Ears that are deaf to the New Testament Hope 
or heedful of insensate force are captured by its doctrine. 

Learned men who do not accept its teachings often rely 
upon the laboratory rather than the soul of man for his 
rejuvenation. They assume a self-assertive concrete universe 
for which secularism is the living air; from which the spiritual 
elements of life are excluded as an insoluble enigma. Prev- 
alent moral formulas, says an American professor of philos- 
ophy, are based upon the adolescent thinking in which 
romanticism predominates. But the time is at hand, he 
informs us, when individuals who have to make ethical 
decisions will desert priests, ministers and melodramatic 
religious revivals for scientists who can give them directions 
about conduct derived from ascertained realities, and not 
from imagination. Theological dogmas may for the moment 
reduce the strife between flesh and spirit, and render first aid 
to a much bedevilled world. But ultimately they are 
productive of childish experiments which benumb brain and 
conscience. So this self-appointed successor to Plato and to 
nearly all moral philosophers since Plato, pronounces the 


THE TWO VOICES 9 


Christian solution of the human problem ineffective and 
negligible. A second category of similar opinions resorts to 
chemical affinity for its solution, and regards the human 
mind as no more than instrumental in the biological adjust- 
ments which that affinity effects. This assumption is ve- 
hemently assailed by more responsible scientific scholars as 
altogether unwarranted. But the majority of the school 
before us is convinced that the powers of eager upward living 
are not directly due to Deity, but to the germ plasm. Their 
hopes are fixed upon the further release and use of atomic 
energy, which, they assert, is at least codrdinate in rank with 
ethical and religious beliefs. 

What are the values of the Church, of the Bible, or of the 
annals of both, from the account of creation in Genesis to the 
present hour, as compared with those attending scientific 
discoveries? The query confounds natural with moral 
phenomena, and falls into abeyance because of the concession 
accompanying it that men must be morally meritorious to 
benefit by science. If they refuse to safeguard its terrific 
forces by their good behavior these forces will surely turn 
again and rend them. The concession need not be labored; 
it 1s as a flood of light in a dark and dangerous cavern. The 
one continuous Ecclesia in Judaism and in Christianity was 
instituted by God, and the Bible written by her prophets 
and apostles under His inspiration, to instill the moral 
meritoriousness which scientists themselves desiderate. 
They ask for it because they cannot produce it, and also 
because they realize that their best work is condemned to 
ignominious uses without it. Academic chatter about man’s 
achievement of amity within the domains of scientific knowl- 
edge is a mere beating of the air. Laughter often unifies 
society better than logic, and love regnant in its heart will 
go beyond the most erudite mind to solidify and elevate the 
race. Faith is still the greatest foe of human ills. The 
germ-plasm has its mission, but it cannot transfer man from 
the perishable to the imperishable. 


10 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


This pessimistic onslaught, animated as it is by mate- 
rialistic ideas, does not appear to advantage in the present 
crisis. It wills the actual and achieves the fantastic. Those 
who direct it are frequently prisoners of their own culture and 
can scarcely conceive of any other. They display the fastid- 
ious narrowness which often characterizes the so-called liberal 
mind. Ever and anon one is reminded by their violent 
egocentricity that few persons are so completely at the 
mercy of their own vanity as those who enjoy a limited repu- 
tation. They freeze the enthusiasm of youth, undermine the 
spirituality of maturity, and turn candor to cynicism. The 
ironic complacency they manifest toward the Church and her 
Gospel is ludicrous in view of the fact that the masses, young 
or old, who seem indifferent to her overseership also reject 
the particular education advocated by her unfriendly critics. 
The choice with the average person is not between religion 
and learning; still less is it between the Pentateuch and 
Darwin. It is between God and unsafe pleasures or illicit 
gains; between art, science, philosophy, and the pugilistic 
ring or the film pictures. If there is today little popular 
inclination toward the Church, there is still less toward the 
Academy. 


IT 


Let us take the flesh and leave the bones of the con- 
troversy. It is as old as Christianity itself, and drew down 
upon the classic period of culture the Apostle’s dictum that 
the world by wisdom knew not God. If, as Professor Bliss 
Perry says, no man can understand America with his brain, 
how can he with the same instrument understand the Deity? 
One is driven to believe that the other-worldliness which 
George Eliot chastised would be a welcome relief from the 
this-worldliness that is too much with us night and day. 
Events outpace thoughts, thinkers agitate themselves to no 
purpose; we have heard enough from scientists of a sort; 
mankind is not disposed to march to their music indefinitely. 


x 


THE TWO VOICES 11 


After all, the physical universe recedes and disappears. Its 
philosophies move in a cycle; the spiritual interpretations of 
life crowd into the places those philosophies vacate. It is our 
duty as Christian teachers to center real knowledge and real 
progress in the sense of God and Immortality, for want of 
which even Greek wisdom came to grief. The duty is best 
discharged by ministers who realize the impermanence of the 
visible fabric, and the futility of resting all human hope and 
fear upon it. The smallness of the earth, a mere pin-prick 
of light and heat within the barriers of immeasurable space, 
reminds us that only as we discern in its fleeting shadows the 
spiritual factors of the Eternal Will are we qualified for the 
ministerial office. The preachers and theologians of yester- 
day who insisted that mortals were but strangers and pil- 
grims here below, were nearer the truth than modernists who 
associate their fate with the fluctuations of physical environ- 
ment. The question of questions, as Dean Inge assures us, 
is not the betterment of this present world, but whether the 
race that inhabits it is vitally united to the unchanging love 
and holiness of its Creator.2. The outward man and all 
around him dies; the inward man is renewed daily. Our 
supreme, solemn confession should be that of the Psalmist: 
“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou 
hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting 
to everlasting, Thou art God.’’? So long as the believing 
mind finds the law and the goal of being in Him Whose loving- 
kindness is better than life, man’s environment is subjected to 
that law. In that mind the die is cast, the goal is discernible. 

Hedonistic theories are set up against the melancholy idea 
that life is the exorbitant price to be paid for death’s release. 
They construct Utopias in which godlike creatures wander 
free of all restraints and inhibitions. Education renders 
political government superfluous; religion is supplanted by 
hereditary law, qualified by vigorous birth-control. To be 


2‘ Outspoken Essays’’: Second series, p. 54, ff. 
*Psalm XC. 2. 


12 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


sure, we should encourage education, sex hygiene, model 
dwellings, suburban retreats, and whatever else contributes 
to man’s physical well-being. One lingers fondly over 
Mr. Wells’ vivid descriptions which forecast what good may 
be in the future. Long distance audition, wireless telegraphy, 
the release of radium, mansions for all, slumless cities and 
light work that charms the worker are sumptuous if empirical 
framings for the oncoming race. But will its members be 
blessed or cursed by these manifold inventions? Will its 
obstinate questionings of sense and outward things be 
obliterated? The reply depends upon human nature itself, 
and whether it will be ruled by reasons which essentially are 
no reasons. For it is a true story, of which many are heed- 
less, that riches or poverty, success or failure, greatness or 
obscurity, are really small and unimportant things in the 
presence of a man’s soul. As he thinks there, so he is, what- 
ever be his outward state. Probably Mr. Wells would now 
admit that an Arcadia from which poverty and distress were 
banished, in which bodily health and prosperity were en- 
throned, must be the by-products of man’s moral and spirit- 
ual development. Even at that, it would not become the 
pledge of his highest good, nor furnish the things his soul’s 
growth requires. While the view prevails that the world is 
crass matter without any influx of spirit, he will have to 
encounter those periodical convulsions which no earthly 
paradise can avert. 


“Just when we are safest, there’s a sunset touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, someone’s death. 

A chorus-ending from Euripides,— 

And that’s enough for fifty hopes and fears 

As old and new at once as nature’s self, 

To rap and knock and enter in our soul, 

Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, 
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,— 

The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly. 

There the old misgivings, crooked questions are”’ 4 


4 Robert Browning: “ Bishop Blougram’s Apology.” 


THE TWO VOICES 13 


Notwithstanding Mr. Arnold Bennett’s assertion that 
real life consists in the “full smooth-running exploitation 
of the whole machine ”’ to the daily satisfaction of the me- 
chanic, its noblest estimates and deeds have been nurturea 
by a monotonous discipline repulsive to these tamer days. 
Profound experiences of pain and labor have delivered men 
and women from moral death, revealed their real character, 
won them a reverence which no mere ‘‘smooth-running 
exploitation” of life has gained. Sacrifice is always a great 
and moving spectacle. The entire Western world was made 
possible by its supreme exemplification. The sterile fallacies 
of the pleasure seekers, or of those experts in conciliation who 
evade resistance until they lose their force, will not stabilize 
the individual or society. Emma Calvé speaks for many of 
the elect when she tells of the sorrow in whose sunless depths 
her song was reborn. The toil and the grief that upset easy 
circumstances also release unsuspected reserves of fortitude 
and courage. Even if life’s problems are insoluble, and some 
are, it is possible for the initiated who have endured hardness 
to get clear comprehensive views of it as a whole, to see 
society, not as a finished product, but as a spiritual fabric, 
always growing, never complete. Many of the constituents 
that form it are either non-existent or not yet existent. 
Those who would rebuild it must reflect that its factors are 
elusive as the air, ‘‘unfathomable in their motive forces, 
exhaustless in their range, and incalculable in their results.’ ® 
Gibbon’s observation should be remembered that few individ- 
uals, however talented, ‘‘are capable of discovering the nice 
and secret springs of action which impel in the same uniform 
direction the passions of the multitude.”” But we may be sure 
that the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the King- 
dom of God is within men, is more trustworthy than the 
thousands of siren voices which assure us that one man is as 
good as another, even when he is good for nothing. In the 
spiritual organization, therefore, which society really is, the 

5“ Cf, “‘ The Times Literary Supplement,” London, May 24, 1923, p. 437. 


14 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


spiritual man is the chief determinant. Hmphasize as much 
as you please the necessity for humane and efficient social 
appliances, but emphasize even more the moral resistance 
within men and women, which must be superior to every 
outward pressure. Otherwise, though those appliances en- 
compassed mankind, it would be devitalized in their 
embrace. 

The bearing of these issues upon the general situation has 
been clarified by some first rate minds in various realms. 
Their response to the true and guiding voice of Faith is free 
from the moroseness that so often accompanies the response 
to the voice of Fear. Undismayed by the rapid intellectual 
advances or the moral disasters of our age, they perceive that 
its accredited adventures favor a religion which is reasonable 
as well as mystical in character. . They refuse to allow their 
efforts for the betterment of society in Church or State to be 
hampered by those who simulate honesty of thinking only 
to strangle it if it contradicts their peculiar ideas. We 
should not hastily infer that these hopeful spirits are, as yet, a 
predominant group. On the contrary, the pessimist who 
sees too much and believes too little is not abashed by those 
who feel that they have an ancient charge to keep in a new 
fashion. The pulse that bounds in them is flabby in him. 
He possesses no satisfactory hypothesis of human nature, 
and the lack of it explains his impatience with its will to 
live, to believe, to act beneath the guidance of that common 
sense which is the distilled wisdom of the race. There is no 
place in his system for the transcendent human movements 
that are frequently traceable to divine intervention in 
troubled days. He looks upon his fellow men as Daudet 
looked upon Renan’s brain, which he said resembled a 
cathedral used to house hay and cattle. It retained its 
sacred architecture but submitted it to ignoble ends. The 
pessimist fails to perceive that few persons are fools from 
all points of the compass. The prevalent egotism which 
is idolatry’s lowest form, and from which he is not always 


THE TWO VOICES 15 


exempt, disturbs him. He not only regards the age as 
wrecked and leaderless but as separated from all past ages, 
and enshrouded in portentous mystery. 

So wise an observer as Mr. Benjamin Kidd believes that 
we are witnessing the first phase of a transition, the eclipse 
of which rests upon every land. It cannot be ascribed, in his 
opinion, to the open or clandestine guilt of any single State, 
nor can it be given a fixed duration. It is a genesis in itself, 
with an infinite progression ahead. No reasoned knowledge 
of East or West has even the methods of thinking required 
for its explanation. The colossal outlines of so weird a 
speculation remind one of the oppressive sculptures of 
Oriental temples. It has their unrelated expressionless cast 
of immobility and remoteness. Its rhetorical description of _ 
the present age as “the strangest flower that ever grew in ~> 
the fields of Time”’ is suggestive, but nothing more. These 
misgivings are rife among literary leaders and churchmen. 
Those who in the repercussion of the late war consign the 
race to perdition are given to proposals which would be 
logical there. Those who for the same cause speak of it in 
terms befitting heaven seem oblivious to the fact that its 
life has to be lived out on earth, where ‘‘ Truth is the daughter 
of slow Time,” and few things are more deliberate than real 
progress. Their sensational outlook warns us that experi- 
mental treatment is the key to every period. Not the results 
of any definite experiences in any age, but the sum total of all 
experiences, past and present, historic and personal, is the 
controlling factor of the human story.’ When authors or 
preachers forsake the experimental for the sensational inter- 


pretation of life, they are certain to indulge hectic ideas and =~ 


fabulous predictions concerning it. Yet what are their 
qualms and fears, their ill founded anticipations and hopes, 
but registrations of the larger life, the lifting horizons, ever 
on before, to which they have not been accustomed? 


6 Benjamin Kidd: ‘‘ The Science of Power,” p. 3. ff. 
7Cf. J. B. Bury: ‘‘ The Idea of Progress,’’ p. 5. 


16 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


The majority of men and women who plod along prosaic 
ways may not be aware of the steady accumulations of 
heredity and of history which create life’s changing scenes. 
But they are keenly aware of their relation to the past. The 
stultifying idea that they are cut off from it is instinctively 
set aside. Previous civilizations did not exist for our sole 
benefit, nor did their economies die in giving birth to ours. 
The debris of former generations is not so much “‘filling in” 
of the gulf over which our generation proceeds to its fore- 
ordained supremacy. ‘The cocksureness of these conceits 
flatters our pride and vanity, but a moment’s reflection con- 
demns them. It is an open question whether ancient Greece 
or Judea does not now exercise a far more pregnant influence 
upon the world than any modern State. The true distinction 
of our age is that it forms a single layer in Time’s strata, and 
few conceptions are more misleading than those which 
attribute to it excessive importance either for good or evil. 
But to conceive of it as a part of the whole of that human 
history which from first to last has been an indivisible unity, 
is to liberate beneficial social and political ideals. There is 
one law, one life, one element, one destiny; and the seemingly 
static differences that contradict this oneness are slowly 
giving way. What the forbears were, the children are; they 
stand and fall together. If the brotherhood of the race is 
honorable, so are we; if we are dishonorable, so is it; if other 
nations squander the soul’s heritage we are the poorer; if we 
enrich it, they are the richer. They live in us as we live in 
them; there is no life divided in the succession of its eddying 
forms. One flesh, one blood, one story, one strife, one defeat, 
one victory—this is the underlying secret of the human 
drama. Scan it where you will, there shine the righteous to 
cheer our darkness, there cower the profligate to dim our 
prospects.® 


8 Cf. “Henry Scott Holland. Memoirs and Letters.’’ Edited by Stephen 
Paget, p. ITI. 


THE TWO VOICES li 


Iil 


At the same time none must forget that neither praise nor 
blame, human good nor human evil, closes man’s case with 
his Maker. ‘Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic Soul 
of the wide world, dreaming on things to come” determines 
its fate. A divine justice and a divine love which burn ere 
they transform have to be reckoned in the process. In man 
himself there is a residual greatness which is not too familiar 
to a materialized era. The sidereal universe is apparently 
unique in its grandeur and sublimity. Yet how ephemeral it 
becomes when compared with the astronomer who watches 
it. Likewise the thinker who, as Pascal did in his last years, 
looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues therein, 
shows us the duality of human life and human nature. 
‘‘Man is a reed, but he is a thinking reed, and all his dignity 
lies in his consciousness.”’ The eternal silent spaces, the 
absurdities of life, the brutality of death cannot quench that 
consciousness. The happiness he pursues is evanescent as 
the dew; the lower levels he frequents have no rational 
terminus. Even an Asiatic nomad knows full well what he 
wants, and is glad to get it. But once he has tasted of the 
powers of the world to come he will start the prayer wheels 
on which a million petitions revolve daily to satisfy the long- 
ings of his heart for freedom and for rest. These realities have 
no relation to the contemptible brochures on success that deal 
with getting and spending. They belong to the soul which, 
once “‘secure in herself,’”’ said Addison’s Cato, “‘smiles at the 
drawn dagger.” 

The homeless Pilgrim, tossing upon the North Atlantic in a 
rude and ill found ship, is doubtless a far less congenial 
spectacle for lovers of luxury than Cleopatra in her gorgeous 
barge floating on the unruffled Nile like a burnished throne. 
But the humble Pilgrim came out of great tribulation to be 
the builder and maker of Commonwealths, whereas the 
haughty Queen glided on to self-murder and the destruction 


& 


18 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


of a vast empire. The fascination of sensuous delights does 
not deceive God-seeking spirits. The Pilgrim temperament 
is averse to the hole and corner existence of the prosperous, 
the well-fed, the bovine. It does not too readily accept those 
vulgar social estimates that are often repeated but seldom 
weighed. It understands that prosperity, lightened of 
scruples, kills far more virtue than deserving poverty on a 
daring quest; that the abundance of this world’s goods is 
still a vexation, since life does not consist therein. It prefers 
the music of existence played in major chords, with the over- 
tones of victorious suffering enveloping it. Its delight is 
in the steep rugged ascent. It believes that to breast the 
heights heroically makes the heroical man. The voice that 
summoned Abraham from plenteousness to pilgrimage has 
resounded in courageous hearts at various but appointed 
seasons. It was heard centuries later on the Babylonian 
plains; and centuries later still, in the hill country of Judea 
and Galilee. It should be heard by those of our generation 
who know many things, but understand few things with the 
wisdom which is insight. 

It is the voice of Faith, whose resonance drowns the dis- 
cordance of the voice of Fear, the lamentations of which are 
now all too prevalent. It bids us hope and see our hope 
frustrated, then hope again. Listen to its trumpet note 
in the opening words of the original Gospel attributed to 
St. Mark. The author quotes the unknown seer of Israel’s 
exile: 


‘Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, 
Who shall prepare thy way; 

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
Make ye ready the way of the Lord, 

Make his paths straight.” 9 


This prophet viewed all preceding ages as a prolonged pre- 

paration for God’s approaching entrance into history. The 

Evangelist applied his rhapsody to the revelation of God in 
7 St. Markil) 2) 3: 


THE TWO VOICES 19 


Jesus Christ. The exposition of Christ’s mediatorial sov- 
ereignty does not belong here. But what does belong here 
is the fact that countless multitudes have never known what 
life was until they knew it in His life. The too long delayed 
enforcement of His ideals also belongs everywhere: of truth 
as opposed to falsehood, of freedom as opposed to tyranny, 
of peace as opposed to war. These are the hall marks of the 
Faith which He ordained; the revelations of the God and 
Father who ordained Him. It is men’s degraded conceptions 
of that Father’s nature and purposes which have inflicted its 
more deplorable evils upon society. And the question is 


opportune, why the luminous spiritual experiences that at- ~ 


tended the creation of the Church and inspired the writings 
of Holy Writ should not make a fresh contact with the 
present stage of civilization. 

Students of the past who compare it with the present are 


aware of the Providence which has been “the great corrector | iy 


of enormous times”’; ‘“‘the shaker of o’er rank States ’”’; often 


using very unlikely agencies to advance causes that seemed 
weak beyond words. We have already noted that the visible 
fabric vanishes, which is an implication that the invisible 
realm remains. The spirit in man subsists with marvellous 
capacity for adaptation, while all else takes its determinate 
leap and disappears. The wider range of his intellectual 
faculties has resulted in a lopsided knowledge which reports 
that during the last one hundred and fifty years the human 
race has literally been rediscovered. Its numbers have grown 
to one thousand six hundred and fifty millions of people now 
living on the globe, whose diversities in color, language, social 
habits and religion create the differences from which most 
international differences spring. Twenty-five languages are 
spoken in Europe; forty-five in Asia; and the remaining 
sixty which swell the total to one hundred and thirty are 
spoken in America, Africa, and the Islands. The present 
number of independent States isabout sixty-five; of which 
twenty-seven are in Europe, eighteen in Asia, twelve in South 


20 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


America, and eight in North America. These statistics bring 
out the extraordinary human complexity of the modern 
world and the necessity for an ordered observation of its 
requirements. The complexity is furthered by the advance 

of modern learning, some of the ill effects of which have been 
' noted. It has grown ten times as fast as in the period between 
Cesar and Napoleon, and one thousand times as fast as in 
pre-historic days. Upon the authority of Professor Karl 
_ Pearson, the product of this tremendous activity is in many 
‘instances worthless. The age in which we live has been a 
series of dissolving views, in which recent economic and mate- 
rial gains were half obliterated by their swift succession. In 
the physical sciences alone radioactivity has shown us what 
unsuspected energies are bound up in the minutest particles 
of matter. But in organic chemistry a single worker may at 
any moment stumble upon a substance at the verge of related 
compounds, that will be infinitely more potent for good or 
harm than any now in operation. The atoms thus chem- 
ically treated are arsenals in disguise. 

Under these novel conditions races and nations recently 
far apart have been jammed together without previous 
preparation. The pace is killing; it strains to their utmost 
tension every educational and religious machinery; the 
forms of yesterday are the relics of today. Yet I cannot but 
believe that these wonders have brought us to the threshold 
of a renewed intimacy with their Creator; and one which is 
absolutely necessary to their right use and direction. The 
French savant, Madame Bisson, is convinced that if human 
intercourse and knowledge are to proceed to advantage, 
they will have to cultivate the spiritual side of life. She 
insists that further deference to the materialized metaphysic 
already mentioned will be inimical to the general welfare, and 
the French Academy has given her protest respectful atten- 
tion. In other words, she solicits for France and for mankind 


10Cf. G. M. Trevelyan: ‘‘ British History in the Nineteenth Century,” 
Dias i: 


THE TWO VOICES 21 


the voice of Faith which proclaims an Ideal Order behind all 
history, and an All Holy Being whose nature necessitates that 
Order. Whatever may be said about her protest, it can 
hardly be questioned that the vilest modern evils have 
arisen, not from ignorance, but from knowledge wrongly 
interpreted and fearfully misapplied. Whoever doubts the 
need of one visible universal Society in the Church, or the 
moralization of the Ideal of the State, few, I think, will 
doubt the benefit of that deeper and invisible unity which 
finds its outlet in a common love of the living God, and of 
His sensible creation. 

These conclusions are reached by what J. B. Mozley 
termed reason working on a higher plane. Nevertheless, 
they have substantial grounds on lower planes. The mon- 
archy of public opinion is always difficult to deal with, be- 
cause it cannot be called into the open. Its rivulets for the 
last half century have flowed into devastating currents, 
while the men and women who prided themselves on keeping 
in touch with it have been unaware of its real drifts. Seem- 
ingly great things have been observed; seemingly small 
things have escaped observation. What was viewed as im- 
portant fizzled out, while so small a matter as a pistol shot 
blew up half the world. A civilization thus exposed con- 
demns itself, and justifies insistence upon its regeneration. 
These conclusions also bespeak courage. They prevent in 
men the mixed determination for betterment which is afraid 
of ridicule; the vanity which will not endanger a rebuff; the 
faint-heartedness due to a sullen pride that must be sure 
of its ends before it will risk its means. True courage chal- 
lenges that patronage of religion which is the armor of half- 
witted spirits who cannot read the signs of the times. It 
abolishes the dread of life, which visualises its terrors ahead 
and ready to pounce, or even suspects that its Author may 
turn out malignant. Such courage means more than one can 
tell in a world of cross purposes, where so many people find 
their resolution to do well in the well-doing of the few. It is 


22 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


“valor without vengeance,” as Dr. A. J. Lyman happily 
expressed it; apart from which no goodness is altogether 
secure, no wickedness is seriously threatened. Yet courage 
cannot be entrusted with the values of civilization unless it is 
united with patience, fidelity, and the spiritual vision which 
knows those values when it sees them. 

The belief that the man who heeds the Divine Voice, and 
forsakes all else to follow the right as he sees it will be backed 
up by God, is of immense service to morals and to faith. His 
course may appear imprudent or even fanatical, but its 
wisdom has been repeatedly demonstrated by a historic 
religious experience which is far more vital than the formulas 
in which it has been expressed.!! Deeper than the fear of 
penalty, higher than the hope of reward, stronger than any 
motive in life, is the assured confidence that the Moral Sov- 
ereign of the universe sustains every just and righteous 
cause. 


IV 


The courageous servant of God will not make his intellect 
the slave of his heart, nor blink disagreeable realities at the 
biddance of his emotions. But he will remember that 
instinct often outvies knowledge; that love is the height of 
good, the hate of ill; and that peace and progress come, not 
by unaided reason alone, but also as the outflowings of a 
brave, believing spirit. Principal L. P. Jacks pertinently 
states one feature of this discussion. ‘On the surface of 
things there is discord, confusion and want of adaptation; 
but dig down, first to the center of the world, and then to the 
center of your own nature, and you will find a most wonderful 
correspondence, a most beautiful harmony, between the 
two — the world made for the hero and the hero made for the 
world.” !2 This statement elicits sympathy even from the 


11 Cf. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison: ‘‘ The Idea of God in the Light of Recent 
Philosophy, ’”’ p. 87. 
127,, P. Jacks: “ Religious Perplexities,’’ p. 61. 


THE TWO VOICES 23 


arrant coward. It is idle to suggest that he relishes cow- 
ardice, or its accessories — fear and unbelief. He and the 
rest of men are on the side of the spiritual hero. Society 
favors the angels. Controversies about nebular or mate- 
rialistic hypotheses leave it cold. It looks upon naturalistic 
theories of the universe, if it knows them at all, as irrational 
attempts to explain it. The younger social groups are keenly 
aware of the new world which is being evolved out of its dis- 
orders. The older groups desire a bond of religion and morals 
that shall be sufficiently strong to anchor their drifting lives. 
Spiritual problems, always formidable, are encircled by the 
craving of old and young for an energizing faith which en- 
shrines courage, justice and right living as the integrating 
forces of society. Everywhere, so far as I can ascertain, love 
is esteemed the light of human existence: love of goodness, of 
reality, of progress, of one’s fellows, and above all, of one’s 
Maker. It is generally recognized that the New Testament 
Gospel exalts such love, and regards humanity as the field 
fertilized by God for its regenerating seed. Men ask for it in 
manifold ways, not the less religious because of their variety. 
And we have it, not primarily as a philosophy, a theology, an 
institutional method, a law; but incarnated in a living Person 
with whom all souls can commune. 

Christian truth is summed up in Christ’s Person; Christian 
character in His example; Christian morality in His teaching. 
Obedience to Him recreates human nature. The rebellious, 
the desperate, even the inhuman, as well as those who do a 
little conventional good with their superfluous means, and 
live apparently blameless but unoccupied lives, have been 
transformed by fellowship with Him. Not belief, therefore, 
in a metaphysical Absolute, nor in a Deity to be sought and 
found by reason alone; but belief in the God who was in 
Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, is the dynamic of 
all Christian creeds and of all Christian Churches. He is 
made known to them as the “‘God who lives in the perpetual 
giving of Himself, who shares the life of His finite creatures, 


24 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


bearing with and in them the whole burden of their finitude, 
their sinful wanderings and sorrows, and the suffering with- 
out which they cannot be made perfect. . . . And thus, fora 
metaphysic which has emancipated itself from physical 
categories, the ultimate conception of God is not that of a 
preéxistent Creator, but, as it is for religion, that of the 
Eternal Redeemer of the world. This perpetual process is 
the very life of God, in which, besides the effort and the pain, 
He tastes, we must believe, the joy of victory won.” ® What- 
ever He may be as the Absolute, “‘existing in solitary bliss 
and perfection,’ the God of the Christian revelation is the 
Father of all spirits, Who manifests Himself in His Son to 
their varied stages of imperfection. He is, in the words of 
Earl Balfour, ‘‘A God Whom men can love, a God to Whom 
men can pray, Who takes sides, Who has purposes and 
preferences, Whose attributes, howsoever conceived, leave 
unimpaired the possibility of a personal relation between 
Himself and those Whom He has created.” 14 

Hebrews, Catholics and Protestants who in the joint dis- 
charge of common duties, have at last found it possible to 
live together without regarding each other as natural en- 
emies, can approach the problems of our age in the light of 
their personal relation with the universal Father. ‘They 
have been obliged to recognize that truth, honour, purity, 
justice, manliness, are neither the growth nor the privilege 
of a belief in special formulas; that men can disagree in 
religion without wishing to destroy each other.” ?* The 
difficulties to which Industrialism (which involves Cap- 
italism), Militarism, and Secularism give rise are shared by 
right-minded citizens of every creed, or of no creed in par- 
ticular. Industrialism has been hampered by grave economic 
deficiencies which left a degraded sediment at the bottom of 
society. For centuries antiquated and corrupt methods of 


13 A. Seth Pringle-Pattison: ‘‘ The Idea of God in the Light of Recent 
Philosophy, ”’ p. 411 f. 

14“ Theism and Humanism, ’”’ p. 36. 

15 James Anthony Froude: ‘“ The Council of Trent,’ p. 294. 


THE TWO VOICES 25 


government prevented remedial legislation in behalf of 
manual toilers. Their countless hosts seem to have been 
outside the pale of social justice; to have had no connection 
with real citizenship. Ministers of State as wise as Pitt, 
Burke and Fox in Britain, practically ignored the economic 
revolution that began in their day. Casual references to it 
made by ardent sympathizers with political freedom were 
usually inspired by fear of the submerged masses. Of Amer- 
ican Constitutionalists, only Hamilton, who had read to good 
purpose ‘‘ The Wealth of Nations,’ foresaw the possibilities of 
an industrial uprising; but his masterly ‘Report on Manufac- 
tures’ passed unheeded here. Later statesmen of intellectual 
briliiancy, of lucid understanding which permitted of no self- 
deception, and a political creed that stressed the funda- 
mental equality of all citizens, did nothing more than im- 
provise economic measures to stave off the day of reckoning. 
Those who now have to meet its demands apprehend the 
need of a social justice, the prolonged delay of which adds to 
the menace of its issues. Nor is it surprising that some 
propositions have been made for its attainment which are as 
impossible as the redistribution of the solar system. En- 
deavors to achieve the sudden transformation of a neglected 
industrial system by the utterance of second-hand platitudes 
have resulted in further disappointment. Reason and right 
are not permanently changed, however, by times of social 
yeast and fermentation; and these are sometimes useful to 
stir up the stagnant thinking of those by whom enthusiasm 
for social equity is seldom well received. 

The laws of commerce no ruler and no system can break. 
They are despotic, changeless, as old as the act of barter 
between man and man. The economic circle describes its 
course through indifference and agitation, after which the 
world again returns to its own. Meanwhile there cannot be 
too many staunch advocates of the good will and fair play 
which are as requisite for industrialism as sunlight for the 
sprouting seed. The opposing tendencies, of capital and labor 


26 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE ~ 


are balanced by justice, not by almsgiving, which creates 
some of the miseries it relieves, but by no means relieves all 
the pauperization it creates. Yet the fury of their debate 
might be checked if both sides would practice amity and 
moderation. As it is, they often remind one of a caustic 
criticism of Landseer that he painted his men to look like 
dogs, and his dogs to look like men. The assumptions that 
capitalists are bloated “spiders of hell,’’ and that workers are 
infamous conspirators against the public welfare, are almost 
criminal when injected in a highly inflamed quarrel. Why 
should these contestants become impersonal and non-moral 
under provocation, or act as though they were no longer 
human beings but symbols of their respective factions? Yet 
it is very probable that the majority are committed to what 
they deem equitable. And the more one knows of employers 
and employees as a body, the more one admires their social 
constancy. They carry on the gigantic and necessary tasks 
of nations and of the world, and since the last war, they have 
done additional wonders for reconstruction in many lands. 

The maturer treatment of industrial problems will be 
found in a kindlier spirit, in give and take, in experiments 
not always insured against reversal. They will not be solved 
by men who deem themselves invariably right, and take their 
stand upon a fictitious rectitude, any more than by men who 
defend wrong positions with transparent casuistry. Owner- 
ship is not an unforgivable sin; profitable trading which 
serves the community does not necessarily brutalize society 
any more than suitable work degrades the worker. Com- 
mercial exchange, and the right to produce or to sell what is 
produced are inseparable from the health of a community. 

One of the obstacles to the growth of social compunction 
and justice is the intrinsic caution of human nature. Men 
themselves are the intractable element in reform. They 
dislike change, and require something more than heated or 
even verifiable impeachments before they can be induced to 
act against the existing order. The late war set aside, for the 


THE TWO VOICES 27 


time being, their innate conservatism. It increased the self- 
respect of the laboring classes, and gave their claims a place 
and presentation they had not known before 1914. Fences 
were broken down, industrial groups were fused, social 
ideals and methods were synthesized. Whatever may be the 
ultimate economic forms adopted by civilized States, many 
of them will date, in my judgment, from the first quarter of 
this century. One could predict their speedier settlement if 
the artisan were not so often estranged from his task, and the 
employer from his responsibilities. ‘The age of industrial in- 
nocence, when the workman put his personality into his work, 
and insisted that it should excel all similar work, has given 
place to an age of mechanism, which often dehumanizes him. 

The deliberate underestimation of capitalism has been 
offset by the failure of Marxian Socialism, which is now being 
rejected by many of its former intellectual adherents. The re- 
action is not confined to Marxian Socialism. The most 
severe censors of Socialism in general are disillusioned people 
who lately professed it. But though capitalism will not be 
abolished until some sufficient substitute has been provided, 
the defense of some of its worst practices should cease. The 
stand made against the twelve hour day by Bishop Francis J. 
McConnell and his associates of all the Churches, was a di- 
rect and irrefragable appeal to the public conscience which did 
succeed beyond a peradventure. The idea of wealth as mere 
wealth, and the fear of what it may do, no longer weigh un- 
duly with enlightened leaders of the Church. Capital and la- 
bor should be recognized as copartners, not competitors. The 
wage-earner’s proportion of the profits should be paid to him, 
and he should also be willing to bear his share of the losses. 
Agriculture requires a land-owning as well as a land-tilling 
yeomanry. The peasant classes in democratic nations should 
be merged into propertied classes and given an interest in the 
State. A home-owning proletariat through a more equitable 
distribution of industrial proceeds would be a strong and 
lasting fortress for society’s general protection. These 


28 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


changes are either imminent or in process. The social order 
we know is as certain to disappear as medieval feudalism or 
seventeenth century monarchism. But it would be a lasting 
reflection upon Church and State if its disappearance should 
be attended by the violence which retards everything for 
which men greatly hope." 

The laborer, skilled or unskilled, is the living material out 
of which a better social organism will have to be built. 
States, therefore, will have to provide for contingencies ahead, 
and widen their intelligence, their sympathies, and their 
policies to include those contingencies. It is also one of the 
responsibilities of capital to make labor attractive, to upraise 
and dignify its duties so that they shall not appear forbid- 
ding, and to do this with a regard for what is right, but 
without a suggestion of the detested odors of patronage or 
compulsion. The value of the humblest toiler as an hon- 
orable servant of the common weal has not been adequately 
signalized by society at large. His deferred promotion in 
public esteem to at least as high a level as that given to the 
man-at-arms cannot be brought about too soon for the sanity 
of social relationships. Nor should it be forgotten that in 
these discussions the last word belongs to the voice of hu- 
manity, and not of legislation.” 


V 


Aggressive war is universally conceded to be the worst 
diabolism that terrifies mankind. Its outrages and monstros- 
ities exceed nearly all others combined. Its latest outbreak 
verified Milton’s line: 


“Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe. ”’ 


1% The program for Social Justice of the Federal Council of the Churches 
of Christ in America clearly states the essentials of that justice. It should 
be read by Christian ministers and laymen. 

17 Cf. ‘The Church and Industrial Reconstruction,” by The Committee 
on the War and the Religious Outlook; ‘‘ The Return of Christendom,” 
by A Group of Churchmen, with an introduction by Bishop Gore; ‘‘ The 
Christian in Social Relationships,’’ by Dorr F. Diefendorf; ‘‘A More Christian 
Industrial Order,’’ by Henry Sloane Coffin; ‘‘Citizenship and Moral Reform,” 
by John W. Langdale. 


THE TWO VOICES 29 


It degraded the combatants who fought for a conspiracy 
against civilization, and it did not ennoble all who fought 
against that conspiracy. Human relationships were dis- 
solved; friend and foe were hedged about on their better side 
by its ferocious abominations. Its irreparable material and 
spiritual injuries became manifest once the furious exaltation 
of battle was exhausted. Commercial derangement, financial 
chaos, political confusion and moral anarchy followed as its 
aftermath. Many millions of lives and nearly two hundred 
billion dollars’ worth of material were flung into its maw 
within four years. Yet notwithstanding these unprecedented 
losses of soul and substance, recovery from them has scarcely 
set in before other wars and their more deadly engines are 
projected. The sword which has already stabbed the world 
with many wounds that have not healed still darts and 
gleams through persistent mists of hate. But why repeat 
these warnings and denunciations? Because men cannot 
easily be indoctrinated with a sufficient hatred of war. Itisa 
parasitical pursuit, yet it absorbs all other pursuits. It is an 
avoidable wickedness, yet it obtains in all lands, on all seas, 
and in the skies above. Its futility as an arbitrative method 
is notorious, yet preparations for it persist. Nothing is 
exempt from its service which human ingenuity can devise. 
It is likely to continue until nations renounce the belief that 
other nations are to be regarded as either amicable or hostile. 
Amicability or hostility are not the last words of an inter- 
national philosophy. Racial interests cannot forever endure 
the impositions they express. Many ask why wars are waged 
either for friends or against foes; why they should survive 
the far nobler imperatives of civilized beings? Forms of 
thought and sentiment, far above these pre-scientific prim- 
itivisms, press the question: must brave hearts and young 
lives remain at battle’s cruel behest, leaving sterile man’s 
love of life and woman’s entreaties for compassion? 

The madness of needless war is traceable to the antagonism 
of two historic principles—the one Pagan, the other Chris- 


30 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


tian—and both exclusive of each other. Mr. Kidd has shown 
that the primal contention of Paganism was the right of phys- 
ical prowess to conquer, and to keep what it had conquered. 
Fitness to survive was the fitness of the fighting male; faith 
in force was evolved out of his aboriginal pugnacity. Every- 
one and everything paid tribute to the known ability for war. 
Upon it were based the imitative obedience of children, the 
subjection of women, the security of domestic life, and later, 
of the State. It received unquestioning support from reli- 
gion, moral ideas and social customs. Even Jehovah was a 
man of war. The bald assertion that it never was and never 
could be an agent of human progress is too extreme. Wars 
of an emancipating or defensive character should be carefully 
distinguished from those which are wantonly aggressive. 
Perhaps it may be said that those wars are moral in them- 
selves which redeem conditions worse than themselves. The 
resistance to the rape of Belgium’s neutrality is a capital 
instance of this kind of war, and our Civil War may also be 
included in the same category. But the impulse to combat- 
iveness has attained a perfection of ways and means which 
jeopardizes the actual existence of civilization. The former 
sport of kings has become a game far too costly for nations. 
Man’s control over his natural environment has almost 
blotted out the survival values of war, or made them an 
eloquent propaganda for peace. We have to strive, not for 
the extermination of the combative instinct, but for its direc- 
tion against the treacheries and passions that breed war, and 
in behalf of the righteousness without which a warless world 
would be a whitewashed world. 

The voices of Faith and Fear are again heard here: one 
asking for moral and physical disarmament, the other for 
military strength to enforce the national will. Both must be 
rightly understood if the political State is to affect anything 
better than a temporary truce. By wise counsel upon estab- 
lished lines of guidance, it may support international lawful- 
ness and order; and this will be its policy if its rulers view 


THE TWO VOICES ol 


dispassionately the worst iniquity of our time. But the 
remedies at their disposal are at best empirical. No political 
organization can create in individuals or in society that sur- 
render to the Eternal Will which is the source of earthly 
justice and tranquility. The reason for this is, as Viscount 
Morley remarked long ago, that “the political spirit is the 
great force in throwing love of truth and accurate reasoning 
into a secondary place. The evil does not stop there. This 
achievement has indirectly countenanced the postponement 
of intellectual methods, and the diminution of the sense of 
intellectual responsibility, by a school that is anything rather 
than political.”’ > The proposals of the State are too often 
shaped by fortuitous circumstances. Behind their mirage 
which flatters fallacious hopes is an impotence that has been 
repeatedly laid bare in crucial hours. No administration 
ean lift human nature above itself, or submit its rebellious 
qualities to the divine law. Backward nations raise more 
troubles than they settle, and are overborne by their sheer 
multiplicity. Where is there in the Europe of today the man 
or even the group of men equal to the solution of the problems 
which the recent war alone has created? 

For the enforcement of that divine law and the solution of 
these problems mankind will have to turn to the Evangel of 
God, lodged for the past nearly two thousand years in the 
ageless citadel of armed conflict. A religion that condemns 
violence and substitutes for it race fellowship can be no other 
than the irreconcilable foe of physical supremacy. Chris- 
tianity’s dramatic challenge of Pagan militarism has not been 
fully realized by peoples accustomed to it as the oldest of 
despotisms. They are practically unaware of the incipient 
deliverance already accomplished for them. It seems too 
good to be true that war has encountered a power to which 
it must lower its crest. Yet from the day of Christ’s birth 
the boasted might of the gods of battle began to wane. No 
period nor State, however bellicose, has been free from His 

18 “On Compromise,” p. 136. 


32 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


governance. Despite official Christianity’s humiliating con- 
cessions to Paganism, the spirit and teaching of its Founder 
have slowly undermined war’s frowning battlements, adorned 
though they are by the votive offerings of all nations. The 
antagonism of Christianity in this connection would have 
been far more pronounced but for the wretched complacency 
of professedly Christian States.¥ 

The former semi-sacred invocations to battle which princes 
had to make or abdicate, are forever beyond the realm of 
unanimous approval. An utter loathing of war actuates 
many of the best minds of the age. They view it, not as a 
recurrent biological necessity, nor as a sort of Malthusian 
scheme for relieving the earth of its superfluous population, 
but as the worst entail of racial barbarism. Three impressive 
modern assemblies have voiced this growing feeling. The 
first was the Conference at Vienna in 1814, after the Na- 
poleonic struggle had devastated Europe and Asia for eight- 
een years. It met as a college of monarchs and their minis- 
ters, who believed that God’s mandate was on them to find 
the terminus for military measures in a holy brotherhood of 
kings reigning by divine right. The second Conference 
convened at Versailles with the mandate of the world upon 
it for much the same end. The third met in Washington at 
the call of President Harding and undertook the more 
modest but practical programme of restriction of naval 
armaments. Comparisons between these assemblies would 
be invidious here, but the one irrefutable conclusion from 
their respective deliberations is that nations will have to 
choose between legal or conciliar adjudications of their 
justiciable disputes, and their eventual displacement as 
civilized and civilizing States. 

Few responsible persons plead for an internationalism 
which wipes out States in wiping out their armed differences. 
The idea of a super-State is not acceptable to the twentieth 


19 Cf, Neville S. Talbot: ‘‘The Modern Situation’’ in ‘‘ Foundations,” 
edited by B. H. Streeter, p. 19 ff. 


THE TWO VOICES 33 


century mind. It is patent that the Byzantine type of 
internationalism, without form and void, attached to no 
particular country, and with no specific duties and obliga- 
tions, is a theoretical unity repugnant to the Western na- 
tions. Nor does the example of Mohammedanism, which 
makes some pretensions to internationalism, move those 
nations to suppress the patriotic instinct.?? But it can be 
made the nucleus for more inclusive and benevolent associa- 
tions. Itis thefirst business of the Christian Church to trans- 
form it, as a nucleus, into anactual and living center for peace. 
Granting that the undertaking has risks, and that total disarm- 
ament might defeat its object, surely proportionate disarm- 
ament, according to the growth of comity among nations, in- 
creases the likelihood of peace as a power organized in justice. 

If the arbitration principle underlying the three historic 
Conferences mentioned has done no more than puncture the 
sophistry that war is inevitable, this in itself would have been 
their sufficient compensation. Should statesmen, however, 
desist from the further advance of peace interests, the 
psychology of conflict will recover from its temporary set 
back, and reassert itself in future generations for which the 
horrors this generation has witnessed will be as a tale that is 
told. The sight of fresh means to do ill deeds is, as Sir 
William Harcourt was wont to say, all too likely to make ill 
deeds done. ‘To avert this catastrophe, moral as well as 
material causes for war must be incessantly attacked. If 
offensive war is forced upon mankind by militant nations, 
the truly Christian Powers will have to combine against 
them. This duty devolves upon English-speaking States, 
whose natural and acquired resources have an incontestable 
superiority over those of any other civilized countries. Such 
resources in their advanced economic development are the 
first line of defense, yet the wars that needlessly destroy them 
break the States that wage them. 


2 Cf. Ameer Ali, Syed: “‘ The Spirit of Islam,’’ Chapter VII. ‘“ The 
Political Spirit of Islam,” p. 268, ff. ; 


34 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


The will to peace is with us, but it is a long way from 
paramountcy. The bickerings of competitive trade, or dis- 
putes about valuable natural products, spheres of influence, 
concessions, and territorial privileges have weakened that 
will. Recent events and utterances warn us that the fuel 
for another conflagration is being accumulated, which the 
torch of a solitary blunderer may ignite. Concerted action, 
such as was suggested by Dr. J. H. Jowett, and is now em- 
bodied in ‘‘The World Alliance for Promoting International 
Friendship through the Churches,” must be increased in 
stringency and extent.”*! It should be completely organized 
and its policies made known if the unclean will to conquer 
is not again to defile Christendom. Zealous intentions 
against that will are entirely insufficient unless they are 
consolidated in strategic action. The right of the Christian 
Church to summon nations to a truce of God was splendidly 
exercised by the Medieval Pontiffs. It should not be allowed 
to lapse by Protestantism’s default. At all times, and in all 
places, it is our bounden duty to leaven world-society with 
the knowledge that not insensible weapons, but corrupted 
hearts are the burden of the issue between war and peace. 
We understand that disarmament largely depends upon the 
sense of security. But to be told by a professional British 
soldier of reputation, that human nature will not change, and 
therefore wars will always be; that though the desire of man 
is for peace, the law of life is war; that life lives on life; and 
that we might as well attempt to damp down Erebus with a 
duster as attempt to control man’s aboriginal instinct for 
blood-letting by either syllogism or agreement, leaves every 
Christian without the excuse that he does not clearly com- 
prehend the gravamen of this whole matter. Here he listens 
to the two voices: the voice of reasoned righteousness plead- 
ing for justice and tranquility; and the voice of armed 


21Cf. J. H. Jowett: ‘‘ What Has the Church of Christ to Say?” and 
‘What Will the Churches Do?”’ in “ The British Weekly,’ September 7th 
and 21st, 1922. 


THE TWO VOICES 35 


violence insisting upon the naturalness and necessity of 
legalized homicide. 


VI 


Secularism is the pervasive temper which hardens in 
habits and customs that separate individuals and society 
from life’s deepest meanings. Its concrete forms include 
whatever in religion, art, letters, trade and the totality of 
human affairs cannot be connected with spiritual ideals. 
The purer purposes of enlightened hearts are usually dis- 
paraged by the secular mind. The malady is virulent and 
widespread. A strange inability to appreciate the values of 
existence is symptomatic of its infection, which can be 
detected in some policies of the Church as well as of the State. 
Its flow is haphazard, following the fashion of the hour, with 
no beata urba of the saint’s adorable vision to attract it. 
Western peoples are peculiarly susceptible to its contagion. 
Whereas in the East religion and life go together, and the 
Oriental dwells by himself in an inner world where truth is 
what he likes to think it is, the Occidental is usually enclosed 
from birth in a material fabric which imprisons him, as the 
men of the Cave were imprisoned in Plato’s “Republic.” 
The material progress of European and American nations 
has interfered with their consciousness of eternal things. 
One is often made sadly aware of the absence in them of a 
knowledge and a reality truer and more real than those of 
mammoth cities, cliff-like buildings, railroads that rib con- 
tinents, and ships that navigate every ocean. These gran- 
diose temporalities encumber as well as aid modern society; 
the self-realization of souls is sadly bewildered by their dis- 
tractions. 

It should be remembered that a great deal has happened for 
man’s spiritual emancipation since Plato’s “Republic” was 
written. Christianity has shed light upon the things of 
earth, and thrown their pretensions into bold relief. Gross 
customs have been refined; standards of human action made 


36 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


more conformable to divine ordinances. The sacred knowl- 
edge that nerves the spirit, dissolving life’s sensuous bonds, 
and upraising it to a plane above that of the Greek philos- 
opher’s speculations, is now disseminated everywhere. Ex- 
pressions of a loftier religious consciousness, ideals that 
outsoar thought, religious experiences too fugitive for full 
articulation, characterize man’s best moods, inform his con- 
viction of right, and elevate his worship. We should not 
underrate these allies of his.higher selfhood, nor hesitate to 
employ them against the miasma of secularism. Yet the 
present plight of the world, without a poet, a philosopher or 
an acknowledged religious or political leader, shows us, in 
the words of President Nicholas Murray Butler, that “‘the 
fresh voices of the spirit are stilled, while the lust for gain and 
for power endeavors to gratify itself through the odd device 
of destroying what has been already gained or accomplished.” 
Even those who resent these strictures are more or less 
aware that the mechanism of modern life has outrun its 
moral and intellectual capacity, that some brightness has 
gone out of it and left it drab, that some virtue has disap- 
peared and left it feebly querulous. The incantations of 
professional joy-makers cannot hush the strident com- 
plaints voiced by an age which has reached the point of 
secular saturation. 

How often its erroneous ideas and malicious customs have 
been put to shame. Yet nothing short of a cataclysm could 
persuade their devotees to abandon them. Much abortive 
thinking which is as prejudicial to progress as are the super- 
stitions of non-Christian peoples is inspired by the secular 
habit. It stresses nationalism as the assessor of human 
effort, and individuality itself as so much available stuff for 
the apotheosis of the State. A country’s riches, expansion, 
material benefit and pride are the articles of its creed, too 
often implicitly accepted by the mass. Rudolf Eucken, 
who afterwards became the dupe and tool of imperialistic 
frenzy, had previously confessed that nothing could save us 


THE TWO VOICES od 


from being the puppets of a soulless State, unless we dis- 
covered and exerted the power to maintain the life of the 
soul against all attempts at encroachments.”” The iniquity 
he first pitied, then embraced, is also nurtured by Bolshevism. 
Both these social abnormalities, Imperialism and Soviet- 
ism, are conspicuous examples of the extremes of sec- 
ularism: the one blasphemes Deity, the other renounces Him. 
Both are forged at opposite ends of the same heresy, which 
first withholds his elemental rights from the individual, and 
then pulverizes his independence under the pretext of pro- 
moting the good of its favorite group. 

I shall not discuss any other manifestations of the secular 
malady, except those found in the political realm. Concur- 
rently with democracy’s development in lawfulness, its prob- 
lems of first rate importance are before us. The Protestant 
Churches, which only recently gauged their magnitude, as 
yet offer little that is practical for their solution. Behind the 
carnival of unsafe pleasures and the dissolution of numerous 
social ties which antedated the war, is that blind belief in 
the State which refuses to admit its inherent limitations, and 
uses vivacious terms in asserting its omnipotence. Its trust 
in political organizations as God’s instrumentalities for 
world reconstruction culminated at Versailles, where it also 
met its Waterloo. There the sanguine hopes and expecta- 
tions stayed upon diplomatists were rudely dispelled, and 
those who had been exalted beyond measure were cast down 
to the depths. Whatever they could or could not have 
achieved, it is now evident that the torn ligaments of civiliza- 
tion’s ideals will have to be healed by other hands than 
theirs. Until half a century ago secular politicians were 
overshadowed by poets, scientists and ecclesiastics. It was 
then an open question whether men of learning or men of 
faith should hold the center of the stage. But while they 
wrangled, politicians forged to the front, and under the 
impetus of a few very able statesmen, captured the popular 

#2 Cf. ‘‘Life’s Basis and Life’s Ideals,” p. 359, f. 


38 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


imagination. Their slightest variations of personal condi- 
tions or their partisan shifts have hitherto formed the staple 
of the news.”> There are present indications, however, that 
the public is somewhat weary of its misplaced adulation. 
The amazing disclosures during the last decade of the inepti- 
tudes and misdemeanors of statecraft have had a sobering 
reaction upon nations. But some of its buoyant spirits 
survive every deluge, and though here and there one disap- 
pears in the turbid waters, a dozen successors bob up. They 
outbid bishops, missionaries, theologians, scientists, explorers 
and philosophers, when it comes to publicity and popular 
influence. We know full well that many of them are of the 
best quality; have stainless honor and a praiseworthy useful- 
ness. We also know that some leaders of international 
reputation have only to be stripped of their togas to uncover 
their native mediocrity. Nevertheless, they represent what 
democratic sovereignty often prefers, and serve to supplant 
the ethical and intellectual superiority it is rather prone to 
suspect.24 | 

Sensible people are never indifferent to the necessity for 
effective politics. and politicians, but their recent attitude 
toward international affairs has often been little short of 
disastrous. So far from easing the travail of the world or of 
affording it some sort of moral control, they have seriously 
injured its higher interests. We should learn from these 
lamentable shortcomings of the State and its officials never 
again to render unto Cesar the things which are God’s. If 
you would not thresh grainless straw do not search in politics 
for what is not there. We are neither to censure faithful 
public servants because they are not thaumaturgists, nor 
repeat the offense of many churchmen by lowering the claims 
of Christianity to meet political requirements. The State 
can seldom, if ever, do anything better than support the 


23 Cf. Principal L. P. Jacks: ‘‘ The Degradation of Policy,” in ‘‘ Realities 
and Shams,” p. 74 ff. 
“4 Cf. Viscount Bryce: “ Modern Democracies,’”’ Vol. II, p. 112, ff. 


THE TWO VOICES 39 


Christian ethic. Political systems, whether autocratic, 
oligarchical or democratic, will be judged in history by their 
adherence to the Eternal Order which authorizes that ethic. 
The perpetuity of that Order is the secret of the rise and fall 
of empires and republics. Nor has it changed an iota since 
the morning of the race, when earth seemed nearer to heaven 
than now, and the lawgivers of the olden time somehow 
managed to obtain larger appropriations from its wisdom. 
Assuredly they defined the essentials of political morality in 
codes and discourses which after times have neglected at 
their peril. For whatever else a living and growing State 
takes on or leaves off, it cannot relinquish the principles of 
these ancient prophets and sages without a speedy reaction 
toward weakness and eventual decay.”° Not only clergy- 
men, but many politicans and statesmen are convinced that 
secularism has shot its bolt. Their acquaintance with human 
likes and dislikes and with the variations of society assures 
them that unless nations as well as individuals are re-schooled 
in spiritual ideals, the outlook for the white race is ominous. 
They need, as the late President Harding said, ‘‘the touch of 
the finger of God”’ existent behind all laws, before the good 
they have dreamed or willed, has even a semblance of reality. 
The voice of the Church has too often been stifled because 
“the high proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard.”’ 
The voice of the State too often has been raucous with a secu- 
larism which proposes little that is not liable to deteriora- 
tion and even to degeneracy. 

If these two voices are to blend in the kingdom of the new 
humanity, the Christian clergyman, who should be the model 
patriot, must bestir himself. You wish that the New Testa- 
ment’s architecture of the social fabric could become and 
remain an actuality, as did the magical palace which Solomon 
caused the genii to build for the pleasure of Queen Balkis. 
You visualize the strength and loveliness of the Gospel’s 


25 Cf. ‘‘ Fhe Legacy of Greece,’’ edited by R. W. Livingstone. A volume 
of brilliant essays. 


40 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


ideals, and how exquisitely they harmonize with those of 
Israel’s seers and with human needs. Surely their appeal 
should have been heard above the clamor of hate and faction; 
they should have purified the human heart of its heathen 
antagonisms at home and abroad. Yet reflect that though 
forgotten by others, scarcely recalled at intervals by the 
preacher himself, the Gospel of God for the race is never 
temporal, always eternal. ‘‘The passion that left the ground 
to lose itself in the sky,’’ becomes a fortress aflame because 
the Author and the Perfecter of our Faith forgets nothing. 
Life’s purposes are in His grasp, and they will be attained 
when men make them their own. 


SECOND LECTURE 
PAST AND PRESENT 


“Then in such an hour of need 

Of your fainting, dispirited race, 

Ye, like angels, appear, 

Radiant with ardor divine! 

Beacons of hope, ye appear! 

Languor is not in your heart, 

Weakness is not in your word, 

Weariness not on your brow. 

Ye alight in our van! at your voice, 

Panic, despair, flee away. 

Ye move through the ranks, recall 

The stragglers, refresh the outworn, 

Praise, re-inspire the brave! 

Order, courage, return. 

Eyes rekindling, and prayers, 

Follow your steps as you go. 

Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 

Strengthen the wavering line, 

Stablish, continue our march, 

On, to the bound of the waste, 

On, to the City of God.” 
MatraHew ARNOLD: Rugby Chapel. 


SECOND LECTURE 
PAST AND PRESENT 
Patriotism not enough to redeem the evils of the age—The need of 


greater devotion to Justice and Peace—The relation of the white race 
to other races—National prominence in history has perils of its own — 


Individual character the requisite of social progress — The demand for~...> 


some modern equivalent of the Medixval Church — Politicians are 
sometimes more responsive to religious ideas than intellectuals — The 
lack of sympathetic comprehension in literary and academic coteries — 
Churchmen’s complaints against Institutional Religion — Orthodox 
devotees to arbitrary theories — The perspectives of history are an 
aid to correct appraisals of the present —- Its annals as a part of the 
spiritual education of the race — Its lessons teach that nations are 
woven into one web — Historic examples of the survival of the fittest — 
Biography is the open door to history — Benefits of the study of State 
and Church in the light of their own past. 


Tue all-black and the all-white method of judging the past 
makes its periods either all wheat or all tares. Thus the 
War has caused many to speak as though it ended in an 
irreversible verdict for eternal wrong, and those who went 
into it with clean hands to end it were equally guilty with 
those who plotted and precipitated it. Others refer to the 
Victorian Age as one of self-seeking materialism projected 
upon calamitous lines. The politics of Central Europe, and, 
to a lesser degree, those of Britain and North America are 
described as agitated by greed, hatred and hypocrisy. It is 
also urged that the catastrophe which fell upon the age was 
at once its condemnation and penalty. So much for the 
artist who thinks in sepia and paints in unrelieved blackness 
“sweat-shops, conscienceless capitalists and human bond- 
age.”’ Those of the white school ask us to admire com- 
manding figures of the period, aristocratic rulers in every 
realm, moving in the serenity of which Tennyson was the 

43 


44 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


singer. An impartial historian, Lecky, gives it as his opinion 
that no country was ever better governed than Britain 
between 1832 and 1867. Most Americans would also say the 
same of Lincoln’s America: an interval, be it observed, 
marked by our Civil War, and by the goading of Britain’s 
manual workers into successful revolt against penury and 
starvation. ‘Those who would live hopefully should not 
accept the black or the white interpretation of history. Half 
the charm of history, and far more of its truth, consists in its 
infinite shadings, contrasts, high or low lights, and paradox- 
ical situations. When clothed in the blue distance it takes 
on a somewhat deceptive beauty, but microscopically scru- 
tinized, its minor phases are misleading, and its repellant 
features exaggerated. True, its last decade has been disas- 
trous, but need we always enlarge on that? Is not the defeat 
of the arch-criminals against civilization an alleviating con- 
sideration? If the Chauvinists won in 1914, and the long 
expected ‘“‘Day”’ came, they are not now boasting of their 
victory. 

It cannot be denied that nearly all nations were under a 
morbid tension before that year. What ensued may be 
praised or blamed, but much that preceded it puts any faith 
in diplomacy or statesmanship fiercely to the test. The 
“uwnreasoning progress of the world” was full of material 
successes, but its international problem was prodigal of their 
destruction. The British Premier said the other day that the 
nineteenth century held its head high and that our century 
is paying the price. Perhaps it would be as near the facts 
to say that the pre-war world masked very treacherous con- 
duct behind its proprieties. Its heartless chase for power, 
territory, and commercial supremacy brought armaments to 
the front, and made war appear necessary and just, as the 
militarists desired it should. Affairs were handled in such a 
manner that under the crushing load of huge armies and 
navies, economic sacrifices, and recurrent political crises, the 
beginning of hostilities would be welcomed as a relief from 


PAST AND PRESENT 45 


continual suspense. In reading the statements and apologies 
of the men chiefly responsible for this grand delusion, one’s 
main reaction is a feeling of their ignominy, and of the 
gullibility of those whom they delivered to desolation. 
Their portraits are drawn in the first chapter of the Book of 
Proverbs. They “hated knowledge, and did not choose the 
fear of Jehovah;”’ now they must ‘“‘eat of the fruit of their 
own way, and be filled with their own devices.” 4 

We are told that pious moralizings about these events and 
personalities get us nowhere. Nor does it serve the purpose 
to be always reminding nations of their selfishness and rage. 
Why are they thus distracted? The reply is because they 
have been deliberately over-stimulated upon their baser side. 
The practice of drugging a race horse for a burst of speed 
which leaves it the winner but foundered, illustrates the 
processes of a patriotism that instills ill-will and jealousy of 
other peoples. This is the revenge which the past takes on 
the present, and there are no nations that can plead entire 
innocence or immunity. When their guides and teachers are 
more willing to believe in peace than in war, I, for one, submit 
that the nations will gladly respond to the belief. Edith 
Cavell’s patriotism cannot be questioned, but her dying 
words, ‘‘Patriotism is not enough,” will outlive every other 
memory of her life except the way in which she left it. The 
ulterior motives of an unmoral love for one’s country give 
rise to those popular sins that must be rebuked. For this 
cause the writers of the Bible suffered many things, and some 
of them witnessed for it with their blood. There will be no 
real betterment of international relations until the issue is 
clearly defined. Its definition and the defense of the right 
against patriotic impulses, require a far greater devotion 
to pure equity than has hitherto been shown when such 
impulses were aroused. 

The enormous waste of life and treasure which has not 
solved these acute problems, nor resulted in any really con- 

1 Proverbs I. 29, ff. 


A6 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


structive policies, is not the whole story. Behind material 
losses, the collapse of currencies and the inflation of prices, 
is the collapse of credit. These in their turn are trivial when 
compared with the social disruptions and moral degradation 
in which they originate. Yet the folly and futility of war will 
never cease because of these losses, although it may be 
halted for a time when the world realizes deeply that the life 
of civilization depends on the continuity of peace. But the 
impulse to war will have to be exterminated by something 
more powerful than economic or social arguments. It has 
left a standing bequest of old feuds revived, new ones started, 
and the cupidity of nations excited afresh. The spiritual 
energy which should expel these complexes has not been 
experienced as yet, except in isolated individuals and groups. 
A truculent peace like that of Eastern and Central Europe, 
increasingly dark with antagonisms, restive, unwilling to 
disarm, and almost sure to end in conflict, agitates a Christen- 
dom half awake, disorganized, liable to a return of the thing 
which it dreads, and yet invites. Its diplomacy, notwith- 
standing the glamor which surrounds its trained exponents, 
is merely an expression of a single nation’s opinions backed 
by force. 

The changed attitude of Asiatic races and of the Orient 
as a whole, adds to the dangers sensed by students of world 
affairs. Personal observations made in China, Japan and 
India, the three principal countries of the farther East, con- 
vince the traveller from the West that the prestige of his 
race is at a very low ebb. The pacific character of the 
Chinese people, and the remarkable ascent to power in peace 
and war of the Japanese, are very contrasted phenomena, but 
they contribute to the increase of Oriental dominion. What 
may occur in the near future has ominous meanings for 
Christianity. Oriental dominion over Asia could not be 
established at this time without injuring the educational 
and evangelizing institutions which are the sources of a 
better life for that continent. Political or philanthropic 


PAST AND PRESENT 47 


measures which mitigate the peril not only of war between 
nations of our race, but of war with the countless millions of 
other races, cannot be advanced too rapidly, especially by 

Great Britain and the United States. Should such hostilities 
~ come, these two Powers would probably sustain the brunt of 
conflict. Hence, great as are the responsibilities of other 
Western nations in the Orient, those of the English-speaking 
nations are infinitely greater. Lord Grey’s dictum that 
humanity must make peace or perish has but to be viewed, 
with Asia and Africa as its vast backgrounds, to give it very 
grave significance. Racial antipathies let loose on such a 
scale as they would supply, and armed with the material 
equipment of modern war, may outstrip the moral deter- 
minations of any age. 

Professor John Burnet, in the last of the Romanes Lectures, 
is apprehensive that modern civilization is breeding bar- 
barisms which will destroy it. Already, like the Greeks, 
many thinkers place the golden period in the past, and re- 
gard oscillation rather than progress as the law of history. 
There are, it is said, present portents of a nature similar to 
those which signified the downfall of the Roman State. Two 
cardinal differences, however, separate our Western world 
from its parent, the Greco-Roman world upon which the 
night descended eighteen centuries ago. First, the scientific 
mind makes it possible for small but well equipped bodies of 
men to control large numbers. This possibility, in its turn, 
renews despotism in Russia, and institutes the direct politi- 
eal action that has overthrown constitutionalism in Italy. 
Second, the territorial areas of ancient civilization, which 
were very much less than those of modern civilization, were 
largely confined to lands adjacent to the Mediterranean basin. 
It has also been pointed out that the frontiers of the Greco- 
Roman States were perhaps not sufficiently strong in their 
defenses against the invading hosts of Cimmerians and 
Scythians, Gauls and Teutons, Germans and Asiatic tribes, 
which periodically broke through the pale and finally cap- 


48 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


tured Rome. But it was the inherent weakness at the heart 
of the Empire that betrayed it to its assailants. We have no 
such barbarian world to encounter, yet unquestionably there 
are races on the other side of the globe which could be very 
threatening to the Western peoples, if they took on the 
scientific learning that has made Japan a formidable inter- 
national factor. We have only to probe a little more deeply 
into current events to see from what humiliation and im- 
potence some of those races are slowly emerging. 

It behooves scholars and statesmen, therefore, freely to 
circulate the sound ideas that counteract the credulity of 
race prejudices, and to warn Americans who harbor them 
against their debilitating influence. Educators should 
select and train young men and women in the duty of dis- 
pelling patriotic ignorance, and of developing in Christian 
States that spirit toward non-Christian races which makes 
for unity and co6peration.” It would be the supreme satire of 
history if, after the Western nations had weakened them- 
selves beyond recovery by their internal quarrels, they were 
vanquished by the Eastern nations which they have held in 
tutelage. But one course, in my opinion, can arrest the 
decay of their beneficial sway in the East. If the English- 
speaking peoples, separated though they are by geographical 
conditions and by some idiosyncrasies, shall prove capable 
of a mutual comprehension and sympathy at present unat- 
tainable elsewhere, they may find their lasting service and 
their own safety in protecting the world against the fate 
which I have suggested.® 

We are informed that by common consent these nations 
have won a leading place in history, and so have drawn to 
themselves the attention of annalists and of mankind in 
general. But we are also informed that leading places are 
exposed to particular perils and that impartial students of 


2Cf. D. J. Fleming: ‘‘ Contacts with Non-Christian Cultures.’ 
3 Cf. C. H. Pearson: ‘‘ National Life and Character,” for a full discussion 
of the race problem. 


PAST AND PRESENT 49 


humanity have no marked predilections for one nation or 
group of nations over others. ‘‘Mankind in general” is a 
vague allusion. The congested and helpless multitudes of 
Oriental lands know far less of us as we are, or of what we 
intend and accomplish, than we know of them, which is 
little enough. “‘Common consent” is also a misleading 
phrase. The success of Christian nations which have had 
duration of effort in non-Christian territories is produced by 
their ethical realities and by missionaries of the New Testa- 
ment Evangel, whether lay or clerical, who engraft its, teach- 
ings upon the native mind in practical ways. The plain tale 
of their doings puts down stupid objections to what has 
been a first class undertaking of good-will and pacification. 
They are the pioneers of deliverance from what has been 
described as one of the saddest tragedies of recorded time — 
the wide separation between the East and the West. They 
strive for brotherhood and amity, and what they quietly 
achieve, contemptible though it seems to some, may yet 
enable the historic centers of Christian culture to resume that 
place in world affairs, which is commensurate with their 
strength and their opportunities. To them we must look, 
and not to the steam-roller methods of goose-stepping, 
bemedalled militarists, or the exploitations of avid traders, 
for the freeing of men and nations from the disabilities that 
hinder the world’s progress.* 

It remains to be said that progress at home or abroad is 
impossible apart from individual character. Political, 
diplomatic and socially reformative efforts must rest upon 
the personal virtues which insure national and international 
rectitude. Those who ignore the divine regeneration of 
humanity cannot postpone the divine judgment, still less 
avert it. Religion, rightly interpreted as the original source 
of all liberty, as the freedom to do as men ought to do, as the 
soul of knowledge, as the fount of ideals which prevail over 


4Cf. Edward GC. Moore: ‘‘ West and East,’ for a competent discussion 
of the missionary aspects of this question. 


50 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


the sharpest separations of color and blood, has in it racial 
unities which can be made concrete in Christianity. ‘‘On 
the other hand,” to quote the illuminating words of Dr. W. 
T. Davison, one of the clearest and most gifted exponents of 
the Christian Faith, ‘‘it is almost universally recognized that 
religion in the future must be broader, richer, and more 
comprehensive, if it is to command the allegiance of coming 
generations. It must be wide as life itself, taking as its 
province truth, beauty and goodness of all types, in all their 
manifestations. If religion is to sway all aspects and depart- 
ments of human life — social, political, economical, national 
and international—as surely it ought, its message and 
guidance must be as wide and various as its claims. Ideas 
must be widened, channels of feeling and sympathy deepened 
and enriched, all forms of activity controlled and directed, 
purified and uplifted, man himself must become more of a 
man in every stage of development, through the indwelling 
power of the Highest of all, inspiring, inhabiting, and in- 
forming all.” ° 

This is the religion that links the parent to the family, 
the family to the State, the State to the world, and the 
world to God. Whether men support it from conviction, or 
only from interest, it verifies the assertion of a Puritan 
patriot that, despite its formal divergencies, such religion is 
the first business of a free State and of States bent on free- 
dom. Anglo-Catholics elucidate some principles upon which 
social reconstruction should be founded, and boldly insist 
that we unequivocally tell the world, civilization can only be 
reorganized on a definitely religious basis. They demand 
some modern equivalent for the powerful control of the 
Medieval Papacy; they ask for a Church which embraces all 
the activities of life, and is hostile to nothing except the 
absolute rejection of Christian authority. An evident dis- 
quietude that many will appreciate prompts this request. 


5 “* Hopes and Needs of a New Era’ in ‘‘ The London Quarterly Review,” 
July, 1928, p. 14 f. 


PAST AND PRESENT 51 


But surely those who make it forget that theocracies, whether 
monarchical or democratic, precipitated upon unwilling 
peoples, are all too seductive to ardent religionists of a type. 
Yet as we shall see, theocracies have planted Common- 
wealths and protected their liberties. For what is at one 
stage of human development a short cut to outward rule, 
may be at another stage the expression of a profoundly 
spiritual impulse. We should not summarily dismiss these 
proposals until we have attempted to provide an efficient 
method for Christianizing the modern State. 

It is a truism that popular sovereignty has ceased to be a 
religion, since political and ecclesiastical governments are 
alike too often ruled by minorities. Its further reproach is 
that democracies are swept off their feet by oligarchies and 
also by demagogues, who have mastered the tactics of cajol- 
ing the people. Yet the system which is flexible enough to 
produce the demagogues, blocs, classes and groups that pose 
as its chosen embodiments, is also flexible enough to take 
what advantages they offer and then promptly get rid of 
them. Government by the people is still on probation, but 
it has the saving grace of belonging to the people, and when 
they choose to assert their rights, it becomes all sufficient 
on the spot. Its tenacity as a system is not a forced ap- 
pearance, but a natural growth arising from the public will.® 
We must deal wisely with that will as it actually is, as well as 
urge that it be what it ought to be. The little gods of part 
truth and part convenience, and their prophets of straw, 
whom the people have worshipped, are laid low; albeit many 
worshippers grope in fear and darkness because their cher- 


6 There is a coronation of the President of the United States, which is as 
real and as impressive as that of a European King or Emperor. True, there 
are no costly robes or elaborate ritual connected with the ceremony; and yet 
the swearing in of Calvin Coolidge by his aged father, the light of a farm- 
house oil lamp being the sole illuminant, was an occasion so reverently con- 
ceived by the American people that the emotions aroused are as deep and 
lasting as if the oath of office had been taken in Westminster Abbey, pref- 
aced by the fanfare of trumpets, and} associated with the glitter of the 
Court. 


52 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


ished conventions have been ruthlessly assailed. If, as we 
are told in behalf of this disillusionizing process, reality pre- 
vails at last, and the hypocrisy which infected the Victorian 
period does not infect ours, perchance it is also true that we 
have not so many virtues to simulate. Unaccustomed in- 
dependence is almost sure to err, yet it is better than a 
fettered social life. We must anticipate its excesses, in which 
each person figures as a separate entity, with separate habits 
and a separate end, without identical necessities or aims. 
Uncouth propensities for flirting with the impossible or the 
dangerous will distort public manners. The bizarre, the 
blatant, the questionable, will characterize the habits of 
knaves and fools. Grotesque developments in religion, 
morals and politics will flourish, comparable to the mythical 
tree Igdrasil, which drove its roots into Hades and spread 
its branches across the skies. Those for whom sorrow and 
death are negligible, provided they afflict others, will be 
oblivious to the ‘‘swollen stream of tears which is always 
falling darkly through the shadows of the world.” Not- 
withstanding these abnormalities, history teaches that what 
Burke termed ‘‘the eloquence of eternal principles,” cannot 
be silenced. Deep and formative influences, resembling those 
of Nature which have raised man out of the dust, he knows 
not how, are always at work. The secret river of God which 
brings to earth, 


‘‘Authentic tidings of invisible things; 
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power; 
And central peace, subsisting at the heart 
Of endless agitation,” 


sweeps through the present as it has swept through the past. 
Its divine currents are always ready to break again into the 
world when men and women are ready to let them irrigate 
their hearts. 


PAST AND PRESENT 53 


Il 


Evidently the theological student of this age has to choose 
between truth and ease, between love of reality and love of 
repose, between resolute search and the soft serenity that 
defeats it. Pious generalities which are the product of dizzy 
ideas, or consoling sentiments that evaporate at the crucial 
point, do not meet his requirements. He must blend in his 
preaching the intellectual qualities of the thinker with the 
vision of the seer, and remember that even the best good 
sense which rejects the inspirational values of the ideal will 
presently falter. There is nothing novel in this alternative 
between reality and repose. The thinkers of Greece and the 
prophets of Israel faced it fearlessly. They inquired beyond 
their actual knowledge for its transcendent sources with 
results beneficial to all. 

But no sooner do we heed Goethe’s familiar exhortation, 
*““Choose well, the time is brief, yet endless,’ and push for- 
ward toward the unseen, than an earth-bound rationalism 
bids us stay where we are. Sensational psychology, not 
without its occasional glances at flesh worship, and a closet 
philosophy oblivious to the fact that life seldom, if ever, 
travels on pure reason alone, interpose their veto on our 
belief in the supernatural. They are not to be taken too 
seriously, since religion can rely upon man’s native response 
to its appeal. Nor is there any actual waste of the spirit of 
the race in their interferences. But the modern world has 
not received from educated individuals who have the leisure 
and the capacity to think, the light and leadership which it 
had a right to expect. In this matter not a few intellectuals 
have fallen below the level of the much abused politician. 
He, at any rate, cannot be accused of supposing that politics 
has the trick of perpetual motion any more than mechanics. 
He has his faults and vices, as have those whom he repre- 
sents, and of whom he is usually typical. But he is not 
besotted by theories which insist that regenerated politics 


54 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


can be manufactured like a suit of clothes. He thoroughly 
understands that the wicked who are slaves by their own 
compulsion rebel in vain. He would about as lief order a new 
flesh and blood body for a Hottentot as offer him a Hamil- 
tonian Constitution for his tribe’s adoption. He knows, as 
we know, sometimes better than we know, that it is only 
in the souls of men and women that a nation’s strength and 
wisdom are woven, that the emancipated spirit is the citadel 
and palace of an enlightened State. When reformative or 
religious instincts are aroused, and move with gathering 
momentum, he is among the first to realize that a change is 
overdue. If these popular awakenings are bound up with 
conscience and morals, his alacrity to acquiesce in them is 
usually the more unmistakable. Moreover, his bearing 
toward the Church is nearly always respectful, and in most 
cases reverent. He esteems her spiritual traditions because 
he is conscious of their salutary control over the masses, and 
although he can seldom revive these traditions, he favors their 
revival. There have been capital examples of statesmen 
whose services to religion have imparted fresh dignity and 
honor to the State, to the nations and to mankind. In brief, 
few public men are unaware of the people’s prevailing faith 
in a righteous God. Nor is their knowledge of this belief at 
all inconvenient for major politics. Without it the national 
fiber is relaxed, and political action is apt to be low-minded 
and circumscribed. In perilous times a godless State fed upon 
materialized notions becomes a hotbed of villainy, and is 
deprived of the moral certitudes that justify sacrificial exer- 
tions. These facts help to explain the dissolution of once 
powerful social organizations, and convey their solemn 
warning to those that are still intact. 

If the politician may be said to steer his course by the 
inevitable, the intellectual whom we have in mind takes 
delight in opposing it. When he is asked to aid in extricating 
his fellows from the labyrinth in which they wander, he either 
assumes an air of anxious immobility, or continues to pursue 


PAST AND PRESENT 55 


his highly specialized and speculative tendencies. The lack 
of spiritual affinity between him and those whom he looks 
down upon as vulgarians is indicated by the slang word 
“highbrow,” with which the latter have dubbed him. Not- 
withstanding that there is a larger audience for every variety 
of vice or virtue than there has ever been, he remains aloof 
from what he calls the mob, and thanks God, if there be a 
God, that the product of his brains is not intended for pop- 
ular consumption. He seldom if ever sees the crowd, since 
his gaze is fixed on authors whose cynical appreciations and 
warped judgments are purely ephemeral, and have little 
or no perceptible relation to literature. He agrees that we 
should possess culture, ideas, and chosen spirits responsible 
for both. But these must be selected from the cults that 
scorn the multitudes. Whatever they generally disbelieve is 
true, whatever they generally believe is false. He might 
have been a Christian in the times of persecution, but he is 
almost certain to reject the Christianity that built the 
cathedrals. Now that the flood gates of democracy are wide 
open, the torrents of life pouring out from them are abhorrent 
to his view. He asserts that all knowledge worth distributing 
can only be realized in its fullness by the few. 

Another species of this genus cultivates the will not to 
believe at all. He treats religion in an icy fashion, is reluctant 
to admit its good, refers to it with a supercilious accent or 
else in derogatory terms, and if pushed to a preference, 
chooses Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius as his mentors.’ Pro- 
fessional academics and authors of this description are at 
zero in a time like ours, when sympathy and comprehension 
mount up in the scale of appreciation, and hospitality of mind 
is welcomed. ‘‘The London Spectator” insists that the 
ability to enter into our neighbor’s moods and circum- 
stances is respected as in itself a sort of talent, and some who 


7I well recall visiting a church in London, noted for its advanced theology, 
where the minister who conducted the services said, in announcing the first 
lesson: ‘‘ We shall read a selection from the second chapter of James Anthony 
Froude’s ‘Short Studies on Great Subjects,’ volume one.” 


56 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


are incapable of it, are careful to pose as sympathetic. 
Ignorance of these pertinent ideas is bad enough, but ig- 
norance of Christianity, as Christ taught it, is very much 
worse. When intellectuals abuse their opportunities by 
severing the spinal cord of religious belief, through which 
civic and moral welfare function for all, they are open to 
justifiable rebuke. Their spiritual negativism and intel- 
lectual snobbery are repudiated by the large majority of 
teachers, authors and essayists. The plain citizen also resents 
their procedure and is unmoved by reasonings which leave 
his higher being and its purposes in the air. He is not so 
hemmed about by philosophic doubts as to be oblivious to 
his spiritual lineage. He knows that no intelligence, however 
well proportioned; no breath of mentality, however cogent, 
can take over the sovereignties of the moral sense, or perform 
the tasks allotted to the soul’s highest intuitions; and he also 
knows that the convictions by which men live do not come 
by speculative reason.2 One can imagine a symposium of 
philosophers, scholars and physical scientists exchanging 
opinions and confidences before ordinary individuals. Per- 
haps their differences, which are legion, if not reconcilable, 
might be accommodated. Yet should the teacher of re- 
vealed religion, whom some intellectuals deprecate as un- 
suited to the needs of living men, intrude in that diversified 
parliament of talents, and ask; ‘“‘ What theory is in the saddle 
now, and where will it ride?’”’, their deliberations would be 
lost upon outsiders unless the spiritual ideal was mounted. 
The rarest learning, the purest reasoning, the cleverest logic 
are but the elaborate triflings of a paganism at bay unless 
they are united to ethical and religious aims.? What is more, 
modern pagans gamble with treasures they are supposed to 


8 In a recent inquiry upon “ Civilization in the United States,”’ by thirty 
Americans of this type, no reference was made to religion. 

9 Wittenstein, whose “* Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,”’ with a preface by 
Bertrand Russell, is one of the significant essays of the times, confesses that 
“ ethics are transcendental’: and that “‘ the solution of the riddle of life in 
space and time lies outside space and time.’”’ We might not agree as to the 
meaning of the italicized word, but it suggests the failure of naturalism. 


PAST AND PRESENT 57 


safeguard, if their conclusions are at odds with the common 
heart and the common conscience. 

When those pontifical purveyors of original notions fall 
foul of each other, Christianity comes into its own. One 
among them, who has recently turned traitor to his literary 
coterie, charges its members with dullness and even hypoc- 
risy. Their productions, he says, are shorn of tenderness, 
beauty and wisdom. The critic in question is a politico- 
social radical, who can be, as we know, a very serviceable 
person. But he hints that if his fellow radicals, who usually 
describe Christianity as an intellectually commonplace and 
morally exhausted creed, were only honest with their readers, 
they would confess themselves charlatans and pretenders. 
What is worse, he dares to insinuate that some of these 
progressive spirits secretly lean toward traditional beliefs, 
and that their denunciations of orthodoxy, as the scarlet sin 
of the mind, are no more than a gesture. They are to be re- 
garded as literary adventurers who make or break their 
idols at the instigation of caprice or imitation. We are not 
concerned with the truth or falsity of this arraignment. But 
it suggests that religious ordinances which are obnoxious to 
such sceptical extremists do not of necessity stand or fall 
at their fiat; and that the problems before us are not to be 
solved by the pundits who would dispatch historic Chris- 
tianity to the rear. Yet this statement should be protected 
against the growing tendency to substitute the narrowest 
creeds for the spirit and teachings they imperfectly express, 
or to elevate the limitations thus made to the rank of the 
spirit and teachings themselves. 

To the closed door of every age there comes a knocking at 
judgment’s midnight hour. Unless the household within 
has a better plea to submit than is given by those whom we 
have described, its prospects are not particularly bright. The 
real intellectual danger of today is not from religion, even 
when it is inert, controversial or barren, but from the emo- 
tional impulses or deranged states of mentality to which 


58 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


many writers are liable. Fixed ideas, suspicious or senti- 
mental moods, judgments that become vendettas, out- 
bursts of passion, and libels upon the historic Faith of love 
and righteousness are forms of moral insanity which are 
more detrimental to society than its physical diseases. 
Some clerics, who consider it a crime to hide their light 
under a bushel, are disposed to find fault with Christianity 
and the Church. One of them inquires if the well intentioned 
and loyal constituencies which preachers have visualized 
are real or imaginary. He believes they are the latter, and 
that those who recommend Christianity to this generation 
will collide with an intrusive paganism which has neither the 
cultural nor the spiritual values of the classic type. ‘The 
Church, he affirms, has been barely holding her own, but 
flattering herself that whenever she makes an affirmation in 
behalf of faith and morals, the people would at once respond. 
Demos was supposed to be on the Lord’s side, and to such 
purpose that there was more religion outside the Church 
than inside. If the last statement yields scanty comfort 
to professed Christians, the explanation accompanying it 
is still less consolatory. Its author states that there has been 
a sudden subsidence in the ageless tradition the masses have 
held in respect to the Church, which has shaken her from top 
to bottom, and alienated them from their own past, making 
them too glaringly conscious of their present for her benefit. 
Do they not need to cherish what is contemporary, since no 
generation has been so entirely cut off from its predecessors? 
The notion that such a severance is impossible is derided as a 
parvenu among ideas. Another cleric tells us that there is 
very little popular demand for the ethic of Christianity, to 
say nothing of its theology. Its very sentiments, the dregs 
of which were once found in novels, ballads and melodrama, 
have been completely drained away. If so wholesale an 
abstraction of religion had actually taken place, the dominant 
moral ideals and inspirations of mankind would have been 
lost to it. The hope of progress, the possibility of progress, 


PAST AND PRESENT 59 


and the fact of progress, which are of the bone and sinew of 
the Christian Evangel would likewise have disappeared. 
But this is one of the imaginary catastrophes that never 
happen.!° 

Philosophers, historians, biologists, theologians of the tra- 
ditional or liberal kind will have much to say about its 
probability or otherwise, yet the final appeal will not be to 
them. The latest accessions to the Protestant Churches in 
America and Great Britain, which are the largest they have 
enjoyed for some years, seem to indicate that they have a 
fighting chance which should induce their detractors not to 
report their end prematurely. A further indication that 
the race is plastic in the hands of its Maker is perceptible in 
the mystical possibilities derived from the doctrines of 
science itself. Something more than mere knowledge is 
involved in men’s reactions to them. Not only philosophic 
but religious implications, which must be courageously ex- 
plored, are evident in the recent discoveries of organized 
knowledge. Those who believe that humanity can be re- 
moulded by God may be heartened or again dismayed by the 
findings of pessimism; but they will submit their hopes and 
fears alike to the test of life itself. They are conscious that 
the Church has not only outlived the late War, but a thousand 
wars before it. Despite the febrile condition attributed to 
her by her numerous opponents, she will outlive the passing 
world for which she is God’s priestess. Faith, hope and 
charity have survived, as St. Paul assured us they would; 
they are resurgent in her and in mankind, and the Divine 
Will sustains their interaction. 

Nevertheless, declamatory malcontents insist that though 
Christianity and to a lesser extent, the Church, may exercise 
some authority over individuals, they are weaker than a 
bruised reed in the world at large. This view is held by the 


10 We remember that in Russia the Bolshevists decided to kill the Church 
and bury it. Having accomplished this, as they thought, and paid the under- 
taker, the evidence goes to show that we shall see a resurrection there, not 
from the grave, but from a temporary obscurity. 


60 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


advocates of super-orthodox beliefs, who, assuming for the 
Bible an infallibility which it never had, announce a cat- 
aclysmic ending for our age. Their attempts to compress 
the infinite philosophy of Christianity within a hard and 
fast literalism disfigure Evangelical doctrine and bring an 
undeserved reproach upon its adherents. They rely for 
their interpretations of the cosmos and of man upon Scrip- 
tures of an apocalyptic sort, the burden of which is mainly 
applicable to the conditions under which they were written. 
The Christian economy, as construed by them, is rent asunder 
by an immovable antagonism between the sovereignty of our 
Lord and that of Antichrist. In their treatment it becomes 
either all mercy or all vengeance, either a heaven precip- 
itated into an impossible earthly state; or a hell too universal, 
materialistic, and useless to be credible to reverent adorers 
of the Divine Goodness. God’s clemency and wisdom toward 
widely different ages and races are placed by them beneath 
the jurisdiction of an arbitrary power. Everything in crea- 
tion is explained under the duress of a sixteenth century 
theory of Biblical perfectibility and in accordance with a few 
Scriptural announcements of contemporary disasters. In 
behalf of this theory, itself the dubious product of a stormy 
period, organized knowledge is excoriated, social progress is 
pronounced a sham, and the world is sentenced to an almost 
worse doom than that decreed either by scientific materialism 
or philosophic pessimism. Millions of devout but mistaken 
men and women who have found personal deliverance from 
sin in the Gospel, risk their religious sanity and wholesome- 
ness in these speculations, and in grinding theological axes 
for the fray. Although history has poured contempt upon 
their theories, from Apostolic days until now, these persist 
as an output of that state of mind which is fervid but forever 
closed. They are liable to the taint of Pharisaism, and prone 
to reserve a sparsely populated Paradise for themselves. 
Such Judaizers of the modern Church exist feebly when she 
is prosperous, but usually revive in her sorrows. Like other 


PAST AND PRESENT 61 


and larger associations of the orthodox, they seem utterly 
unaware of the discredit which has come upon much creedal 
religion, since experimental science began to contribute to the 
progress of mankind.1! 

The discredit cannot be removed by threats and fulmina- 
tions. Nor can the majority of the American people who are 
today unchurched, be brought to a sense of their Christian 
duty by the insistence upon fixed standards of belief that are’ 
no longer final. Those who propose to restore creedal 
religion should do so without fear of fundamentalists or of 
extreme liberals. It must be reéstablished by Christian 
thinkers who reject the opinion that theology is undermined: 
in whom the spirit and content of religion are set on finding 
clearer and more comprehensive formulations of the Faith; 
and for whom the requirements of the religious consciousness 
are guaranteed by the spirit and writings of the New Testa- 
ment. The theology they derive from their research may be 
historical, psychological or humanistic, but it should at 
least be Christian theology. (Strictly defined, there is no 
Protestant nor Catholic truth in theology, labels that are 
erroneous and misleading, but simply truth, as Christ 
revealed it.) It should insist upon the purity of motive 
and of conduct, which is well pleasing to the God whom 
the prophets declared, and our Lord incarnated. It must 
beware of the alloy of excessive speculation found in the 
gold of much past and present theology. It must remem- 
ber that while there is a difference between the religious and 
the philosophical standpoints, they always intersect, and are 
mutually helpful, and also that what their intersections 
produce is to be proved by its ability to develop higher ideals 
and more righteous living. 


11 Cf, 8. J. Case: ‘“* The Millennial Hope ’”’; Oscar L. Joseph: ‘‘ The Coming 
Day ”’; H. F. Rall: ‘‘ Modern Premillennialism and the Christian Hope.” 


62 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Il 
Let us turn now to what Dryden calls, 
‘“‘The firm perspective of the past,” 


where speculations are under bonds, and events have been 
followed by intervals sufficiently wide to verify their mean- 
ing. Another poet, Lucretius, one of the noblest in Roman 
literature, in a fine figure speaks of the detachment of view 
necessary for those who would rightly use that perspective. 
He depicts the marshalling of the warriors on the plain, the 
gleam of their burnished arms, the fiery charges of the horses 
that shake the ground. But on the far-off heights above, all 
the scouring legions seem motionless, and the confusions 
blend, as it were, in one steady sheet of flame. 

This aloofness does not mean that we should treat the past 
as a refuge from duty, but as a storehouse of the ripest expe- 
rience available for the discharge of duty. It prevents us 
from overrating the importance of the present, and teaches 
us that no outward show of movement is of much conse- 
quence when compared with the changeless principles behind 
it. The more thoroughly we explore the latitudes and 
longitudes of Time, in which the regenerating winds of the 
Spirit have blown as they listed, the more certain we shall be 
that those winds still blow. The records of Church and 
State are an unfenced expanse where, almost without excep- 
tion, the relation and witness of Christianity to the Divine 
Order can be recognized to advantage. Bishop Mandell 
Creighton reminds us that the theological and philosophical 
phases of the Faith, its connections with nations and the 
world, and the creeds which have shaped its various policies, 
are part and parcel of the religious education of the race. 
The consequences of the Emperor Constantine’s conversion, 
the significance of the controversy between Nicwan bishops 
and their adversaries, the outcome of the General Councils of 
Constance and Trent; Augustinianism as St Augustine 


PAST AND PRESENT 63 


evolved it, Lutheranism according to Luther, the Presbyterian 
and Puritan systems as Calvin and Cartwright conceived 
them, or Methodism as Wesley led its triumphant march, are 
subjects deserving our closest scrutiny. The judgments upon 
Church or State that persist are those founded upon the 
continuous experiences of their life in successive ages. Judg- 
ments upon them inspired by mere reaction from what is 
happening, often relax our hold on lasting realities, and are as 
ephemeral as other contemporary judgments from which 
they, in turn, react. Surely we have had our fill of both 
kinds. 

Wherever we concentrate in history, whether it be upon 
the immemorial associations of Jerusalem, Constantinople, 
Rome or Geneva; as Christians, we should visualize the 
wealth of our religious heritage; as churchmen, we should 
feel at home; as citizens, we should observe the chequered 
progress of the State. The reasons for the present significance 
of all institutions embodying Christian truths, or for their 
varied but indestructible elements, can never be fully under- 
stood by those who refuse to study their origin and growth. 
Nor will the narrow and confusing dogmatism of sectarian 
opinion be displaced by a truly catholic doctrine unless men 
venture beyond the confines of their respective denomina- 
tions. The Reformed Churches must learn that Rome 
always has stood for ideals far greater than Protestantism 
has ever appreciated; and Roman Catholics must learn that 
Protestantism has been the charter of the soul’s freedom in 
Christ. No priesthoods or prophetical orders, no sacramental 
or theological teachings, no concepts of holiness or oneness, 
no movements of reform or returns to ancient ways have 
existed in the past that did not convey lasting benefits to 
humanity. The assertion of the thirteenth century Mediz- 
valists that Christ was the Lord of lords, and the plea of the 
sixteenth century Reformers that man’s approach to his 
Maker should be untrammelled, have issued in the further- 
ance of the Gospel. If there is to be in our day an abandon- 


64 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


ment of provincial religious structures in behalf of a larger, 
truer temple of God as the home of all nations, Christianity 
will be best applied to that end by those teachers who know 
its annals, and are baptized afresh in its spirit. 

What in history, sacred or secular, so called, is to us vague 
and formless, should be vivified. For, valuable as are the 
records of the Church because they tell us of God’s manifes- 
tation to men, and of their rejection or acceptance of Him, 
the history of the State is scarcely less valuable. It em- 
phasizes those human and natural elements of life which have 
a sacredness all their own. The scholar who toils diligently 
in both realms will frequently find them without frontiers. 
He will be amply rewarded if only by his increasing con- 
sciousness that Church and State shall eventually be united 
in the Kingdom of God here on earth. The priestly systems 
of Asia, the intellectual glories of Greece, the military and 
legal imperialisms of Rome, the spiritual authority of the 
early Christian Church, the Papal government of Cathol- 
icism, the development of modern States under Protestant- 
ism, and the industries, policies, philosophical or religious 
developments that characterize these States, Churches and 
periods, are at your disposal. The ground is well prepared, 
the materials are more than plentiful, the ages containing 
them are veined with life. They need but the harmony and 
unity which the student should bring to them, to show him 
the wonderful activity and variety of the entire evolution. 

If we do not have to exclude from our sympathetic interest 
any department of history, neither do we have to consort 
with degrading memories of lives that were never really 
lived, or of deeds which should never have been done. Of 
course we shall encounter the worthless and the immemora- 
ble; the gifted minds that were recreant; the liars and the 
cowards whose infamies blister human records. But neither 
these, nor the parasites, the bullies, the sharpers and the 
scoundrels of bygone days need trouble us. We are not to be 
too much engaged with princes who betrayed the State, with 


PAST AND PRESENT 65 


prelates who betrayed the Church, or with politicians who 
fawned for place and power. They are intended for our 
warning, not for our intimacy, and should be left in the 
quarantine to which they belong.” Jn the words of Frederic 
Harrison: “If history has any lessons, any unity, any plan, 
let us turn to it for this. Let this be our test of what is history 
and what is not, that it teaches us something of the advance 
of human progress, that it tells us of some of those mighty 
spirits who have left their mark on all time, that it shows us 
the nations of the earth, woven together in one purpose, or is 
lit up with those great ideas and those great purposes which 
have kindled the conscience of mankind.” 

These evidences of a common design governing the whole 
historic structure add to the attractions of the subject. The 
economic or constitutional aspects of the State, and the 
teachings that have endowed the Church with her rightful 
claims upon humanity, are almost without exception a 
consistent development. To take a further example, the 
numerous alignments and sects of modern Christianity did 
not drop out of space, but emerged, each in its own succes- 
sion, from one preéxistent Divine Society. Most of them 
did not imagine themselves to be leaving the Church, but 
preserving her against her enemies or cleansing her of her 
evils. Their breaches have widened or narrowed during the 
lapse of centuries, yet neither the Roman nor the Greek 
Catholic, the Anglican nor the Protestant Communions, 
have escaped the original Church which promulgated the 
Faith and produced the Bible, to which they alike appeal. !* 
Plainly, few things, if any, that have been cease to be; they 


12 The penchant for large tomes dealing with ‘‘ Bad Men” and “ Bad 
Women” is more marked in Europe than in America, but both continents 
can do without the product. To get at the facts contained in these biog- 
raphies it is necessary for authors to breathe the air of moral cesspools: 
and only readers with morbid tastes could possibly endure narrations which 
are made up of intrigue, adultery and murder. 

13° The Meaning of History,” p. 11. 

14C0f, W. G. Peck: ‘‘ The Values of the Sacrament. An Essay in Recon- 
struction.” 


66 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


only undergo changes. There will be no new world in the 
sense of sudden and immediate novelty. Foolish animadver- 
sions of things past, foolish exaltations of things present, 
foolish expectations of things future, are ever with us; the 
last, perhaps the most pathetic of the three. All, as George 
Saintsbury reflects, have been encouraged by the omnipres- 
ent reaction of a great war. But none could domineer over 
men’s ideas so easily were they more deeply versed in what 
has been. | 

History reminds us at every stage of the shining virtues 
which are often found with distressing vices in the same 
human character. It shows us that some of its priceless values 
have been obtained in desperate conditions. Thus ancient 
Greece, from a fairly inclusive viewpoint, has been compared 
to ‘‘a giant dreaming of freedom while locked in the arms of 
a courtesan slave.” An intellectual and ethical eminence, 
entirely foreign to her surroundings, unknown to previous or 
after ages, gave her during the fifth century B. C. an un- 
equalled drama, poetry, philosophy, political ethic, and art. 
Out of the Greek mind at its climax came the creative light 
without which heat is useless; to which men like Socrates, 
Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek masters contributed their 
full quota. It seems impossible, as ‘‘The London Spectator” 
comments, that a nation so justly celebrated was degraded 
by savagery, unbridled lust and slavery. Yet its under- 
world was a Saturnalia of hideous depravities, and the 
wickedness now uncovered in it challenges belief. The 
social order rested upon human bondage; the City-States 
violated the tenets of their philosophers by making ceaseless 
war upon each other. Unnatural vices were practised; even 
human sacrifice was suggested as the best ‘‘medicine”’ for an 
ailing commonwealth. Citizens who met to hear and discuss 
the sublime tragedies which still echo in men’s ears were 
themselves a sort of corporate tragedy.© The curious self- 


16 Cf. W. Warde Fowler: ‘‘ The City-State of the Greeks and Romans,’’ 
Chapters IX and X on the internal and external causes of decay. 


PAST AND PRESENT 67 


sufficient groups which listened to the greatest thinkers of 
the race, or watched the building of the Parthenon as the 
crown of Attic splendor, were only one remove from the 
heathen tribes they despised. What could be more remote 
from classic Greece than naked primitivism? Nevertheless 
they lived side by side. Evils and infamies best left unde- 
scribed were in proximity to the allegiance to reason, the 
reflective breadth and clearness of statement of the Greek 
mind at its best. One is almost driven to the conclusion that 
it was an extraordinary episode, preparatory for the Great 
Teacher who spoke a dialectal form of the Greek language, 
and for the deliverance of His message in those cultural forms 
which insured its acceptance beyond the boundaries of 
Judaism. In Christ and in Johannine Christianity, a pu- 
rified, ennobled Greece lived again, and distributed her 
gifts to mankind in the Faith that owes much to her.'® 


IV 


If it seems to you that the flagrancies of our age almost 
excuse every former period of wrong doing, look back, not to 
antiquity, but to the Europe and America of your nearer 
ancestors, when history was made in iniquitous as well as in 
righteous ways. The eighteenth century is the immediate 
precursor, save one, of our own. Because of great revolu- 
tions in politics and social theories, the world of today makes 
the world of yesterday unreal and remote. The student feels 
that it is as distant as the Renaissance, and in numerous 
aspects, not nearly so attractive. Philanthropy had an 
infrequency which made it singular. The Decalogue went 
out of fashion. The social virtues fell into abeyance. Mark 
Pattison describes the era as “‘one of decay of religion, 
licentiousness of morals, public corruption, profaneness of 
language, —a day of rebuke and blasphemy .. . an age 
destitute of depth and earnestness; an age whose poetry 
was without romance, whose philosophy was without insight, 

1 Cf. C. Ackermann: ‘‘ The Christian Element in Plato.’’ 


68 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


and whose public men were without character; an age of 
‘light without love,’ whose very merits were of the earth, 
earthy.” Since this sweeping verdict was pronounced in 
1862, we have learned to understand the eighteenth century 
better. We know that despite its sordidness, it was not and 
could not have been wholly corrupt. Agents and forces of 
purification are always present in every society, however 
debased and degenerate that society may be, though often 
too far below the surface for their presence to be detected by 
the superficial observer. 

Yet beyond question the disorders of civilization during 
the years included in Pattison’s survey were far-reaching and 
obstinate. National character was such as to make belief 
in a constitutional government impossible. The wise political 
instincts now attributed to English-speaking peoples, and 
their actual establishment of civic stability are much more 
recent than is usually supposed. Levity, selfishness and 
turbulence were prevalent. The reign of the Puritan saints 
was succeeded by the revels of the Stuart and Hanoverian 
sinners. The profligates of the Restoration produced a 
progeny almost worse than themselves, whose refined but 
cynical brutalities it would be difficult to exaggerate. The 
highest elements in human existence were frittered away; 
conduct ran in wrong channels; conscience was prostituted ; 
then indeed was 


“Time a maniac scattering dust, 
And life a fury slinging flame.”’ 38 


Monarchs and nobles of the Continent displayed a callous- 
ness which took no account of the occasional famine prices 
of food, of the starvation of the plain folk, or of the high 
rate of infantile mortality. Land owning barons and gentle- 
men of quality regarded the nameless hordes on whom they 


17 Mark Pattison: ‘‘ Essays,”’ Vol. II. p. 42. 
1% Cf. The Author’s ‘‘ Three Religious Leaders of Oxford,” pp. 240 ff. 


PAST AND PRESENT 69 


relied for everything as their servile creatures. Religious 
zeal was denounced as a species of madness. The skepticism 
which infected universal society became skeptical even of 
itself. Liewdness and debauchery corroded the social de- 
pendability of the peasantries who imitated their superiors. 
Pompous bishops and pluralist parsons, who seldom fed their 
flocks, lingered in places and followed pursuits forbidden to 
the cloth. Victimized by poverty, disease and drunkenness, 
the people resorted to lawlessness. The severity of criminal 
codes, which in Britain alone made more than one hundred 
offenses punishable with death, and used sign posts for 
gibbets, could not repress theft and murder, nor maintain 
public order and safety. Society became a melancholy 
wreck: the despair of the moralist and the legislator. Carlyle 
thundered against the century, and said its one decent act 
was to blow out its own brains in the French Revolution. 
Yet from this degraded period emerged those spiritual forces 
that revived the Church, and set up representative democ- 
racies in Great Britain, France and the United States of 
America. It shows that the growth of civilization, the 
spread of knowledge, the habitual reverence for law and order, 
and for all social essentials, have usually sprung from great 
individuals. ‘They transformed this era, they ended its 
anarchies, they upheld the State, they breathed new life 
into an expiring Faith, they lifted the curse which had fallen 
on a hapless age. For it was the age of Wesley, of Washing- 
ton, of Johnson, of Jefferson, of Burke, of Hamilton, of Pitt, 
of Marshall, of Fox, and of Franklin: men who were magis- 
trates of God in their respective realms. 

Christianity itself is the foremost example of this habit 
of the past to bring forth meat out of the eater. Nor was it 
ever so conclusively demonstrated as in the most important 
movement of Time. It would be difficult to reduce the hu- 
man beginnings of our religion below their actual levels of 
helplessness and insignificance. As a supernatural Faith 
it was repudiated by the Jews among whom it originated. 


70 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


The death of its Founder was entirely too casual to excite 
any comment from the Romans or the Greeks. His teach- 
ings were not known by contemporary scholars and think- 
ers, and by only a few of the poor and the lowly to whom 
He communicated them. What followed on this non- 
apprehension of the world’s supreme Figure is to be discussed 
in later lectures. But the discussion will be valueless unless 
we learn from it that these strange admixtures of utmost evil 
and utmost good, of veritable feebleness and omnipotence, 
are not excluded from our own or from any other time. It is 
erroneous to suppose that the ages of faith which produced 
saints and heroes are closed to us, or that those saints and 
heroes belonged to a more divine type, living in a far less 
oppressively human environment than ours. From the 
philosophic standpoint such conceptions are void of historic 
content, arbitrary, and mischievous. As a matter of fact, 
the world of the Apostles was an infinitely viler world than 
the one we know. Yet it sufficed for them as ours ought to 
suffice for us. St. Paul’s letter to the Romans testified that 
they knew the worst and believed the best about it; they 
saw its damning iniquities, but they also foresaw its dawn- 
ing glories. ‘Their contemplation of those immutable prin- 
ciples which sustain society convinced them that the Creator’s 
Love and Wisdom had invested too heavily in man to forsake 
him. 

Can we not conform our outlook and approximate to 
theirs? According to our trust in them and in Him Whom 
they obeyed, be it unto us! That trust will at least get an 
even chance if we keep an eye upon the comedy of men’s 
indiscriminate condemnation of this half-way house which 
they inhabit. Of course the race will outgrow it, but it 
will not do so by demolishing it. Fox said of Burke that he 
was an exceedingly wise man, but wise too soon. If so great 
an intellect as Burke’s was sometimes at the behest of his 
imagination, truly we have need to watch against the in- 

19 Cf, §. Angus: ‘‘ The Environment of Early Christianity,’’ Chapter III. 


PAST AND PRESENT 71 


solence of our ill founded fears or hopes. I am not of those 
who contend that the open expression of truth is seldom 
practicable. On the contrary, its suppression deadens life. 
The brave avowal of sincere beliefs is our indefeasible obliga- 
tion. But they should be well meditated, rightly stated, 
constantly revised, and compared with the consentient be- 
liefs of an authoritative nature. He who avows them 
should always be able to detect the needs of the hour and the 
signs of the times. After these precautions have been taken, 
it is often the case that what is loosely phrased, “‘the spirit of 
progress,’ is an imponderable which eludes the shrewdest 
efforts to discern it. 

An open door to history is in the biography inseparable 
from it, since if persons rather than events attract us, we 
eannot get at them without knowing their surroundings. 
What is more, there is a meaning in which those persons are 
the past we really know. Its temper, its tendencies, and its 
aims are incarnated in them. Nothing is more Hellenic than 
Plato and his “‘ Republic,” or more medieval than Hildebrand 
and his theocratic autocracy. If the Renaissance found its 
diplomatic voice in Machiavelli and its cultured voice in 
Erasmus, it also found its religious voice in Luther and 
Calvin. The England of the New Learning lived in Shake- 
speare, in Jonson and in Marlowe. The England of the 
Reformation reached its military climax in Cromwell, its 
poetical climax in Milton, and its political climax in Lord 
Somers and John Locke. Revolutionary France was pre- 
figured in the Encyclopedists—in Voltaire, Diderot and 
Rousseau. The constitutionalism of our Republic is best 
understood by mastering the leading conceptions of Wash- 
ington and those of the statesmen who served with him; and 
Lincoln remains, as he is likely to remain, the ideal per- 
sonalization of representative democracy. 

The general course of nations as well as their outstanding 
personalities, and what they have loved or hated, lost or 
won, their peculiar bent, or specific contributions to man- 


72 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


kind, appear in the history of Church and State. Their 
importance for the theological student surpasses that of 
ephemeral volumes of sermons, or of sectarian discussions 
that are not based on primal realities. Although these two 
organizations have long monopolized the social structure, 
their harmonious codperation is still an indefinite prospect 
in all Christian lands. Numerous and weighty reasons sup- 
port the contention of scholars and statesmen that their 
true balance has not been struck, and not a few maintain 
that its adjustment is the problem of problems to which 
competent thinkers should address themselves afresh. 

The State with which the Apostolic Church had relations 
was the most efficient social organization known to mankind 
before the Christian era, and it was then at the high point 
of its efficiency. When our Lord was accused of endeavoring 
to make Himself a King, His judge, Pontius Pilate, Proc- 
urator of Cesar in Judza, represented the Chief Magistrate 
of a nominal Republic which ruled the western world. The 
conflict begun by that trial, and by the creation of the Divine 
Ecclesia in the midst of that Republic, has by no means 
subsided. The relaxation of religious and domestic disci- 
pline, the tyrannies of scientific, literary or ecclesiastical 
hierarchies, the exactions of temporal power, the illicit 
developments of individualism, and the excessive claims of 
social groups lend weight to the conclusion that restraint is 
still a necessary art of government. The majority of nations 
needs a more enlightened guidance than their traditional 
methods afford, better protection from selfish greed within 
and without their jurisdiction, and a steadier help toward 
practical betterment. 

The study of the State in the light of its own past, is rein- 
forced in democracies by the argument that they do not give 
men and women that equality of economic opportunity which 
is the logical sequence of political equality. Their social 
development falls short of the goal here named. Earlier 
ideas that all persons were equal in character, intelligence and 


PAST AND PRESENT 73 


ambition are negatived by the evidence of humanity itself. 
There is an irremovable distinction between an impossible 
natural equality, and an attainable political equality. The 
theory that men are created free and equal is relegated to the 
lumber room of decrepit notions which flourished in an 
agitated time. It is exceedingly doubtful if the leaders of the 
American Revolution ever held the theory in the sense often 
attributed to them.”? Be this as it may, when strictly inter- 
preted, its inevitable outcome is a Socialism which violates 
the best political instincts of freedom-loving States, Their 
choicest products are leadership, and the conceptions and 
policies of leadership. These alone insure social progress, 
and they are usually found, not in the majority, but in the 
one or the few. The wise words of Sir Henry Jones are 
worth recalling in this connection: ‘‘ The road to ruin for an 
ignorant and selfish democracy is far shorter than for any 
other kind of misgovernment; the fall is greater and the ruin 
more complete. There is no builder of the common good 
who builds so nobly and securely as a wise democracy, and 
there are no hands which destroy so hopelessly as the hands 
of the many.” 7! 

Yet democratic States evince a growing belief that the 
industrial movements which have revolutionized modern life, 
require the extension of the principles of right and justice, 
to include equality of economic opportunity. How far that 
extension can be made by secular governments without a 
regeneration in the moral and religious habits of the people, 
is a matter we shall have to notice later. Unquestionably, 
the modern limitation of government to political affairs has 
removed formidable obstacles from the path of popular 
rights and duties. But will its expansion to cover industrial 
and kindred affairs maintain or abolish the individualism 
upon which nations, and most of all, democracies, very much 
depend? Experience teaches that the moral control of the 


20;Cf. Viscount Bryce: ‘‘ Modern Democracies,”’ Vol. I. pp. 48, 60. ff. 
21‘*The Principles of Citizenship,”’ p. 73. 


74 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


people’s work and pleasure is a hazardous and difficult task 
for the political State to assume. Though the present revolt 
against the frightful increment of veritable heathenism which 
disgraces professedly Christian nations is widespread and 
clamant, the contention as to whether the temporal or the 
spiritual powers, or both conjointly, shall purge the general 
situation of its social abnormalities is now before us daily. 
Those who insist upon the absorption of Church and State 
in the Kingdom of God have little support from the modern 
State. The Church and the nation are no longer coexten- 
sive, and the theocratic identification that once prevailed in 
them does not obtain in law. The Jewish ideal that there is 
no severance between the divine and civil rule, is set aside 
today by legal precedents derived from the Roman Empire 
and from the Reformation. These precedents are strength- 
ened by memories of the hardships and humiliations in- 
flicted upon the State by the once powerful Medieval 
Church. 

There was no comprehensive religious organization similar 
to that of Israel in the Roman world. Even single cities such 
as Rome, Athens, or Ephesus, were religiously separate. 
Nevertheless, a strong minority of Christians and non- 
Christians in civilized States favor their recognition of reli- 
gion, because they have lost faith in the theory of society’s 
inherent progress. Man’s conquest of his natural environ- 
ment, his enactment of better laws, and his execution of 
equal and speedy justice, will not, in the opinion of numbers 
of thoughtful people, satisfy his aspirations for reform. 
These, as they view the situation, are seriously impeded by 
political and national barriers against which the religious 
temper of Europe and America is vehemently moved. A 
great deal that is offered in defense of those barriers by 
publicists and statesmen is looked upon as archaic and 
mischievous sentimentalism. Psychologists and_ biologists, 
who ridicule what they describe as the empty platitudes of a 
shortsighted patriotism, have their own specifies. Yet their 


PAST AND PRESENT 75 


scientific estimates of social betterment are no more ac- 
ceptable to theocratically disposed men and women than are 
those of the political empirics.” 

Christians who believe that the Kingdom of God must be 
built here and now by His omnipotent and saving grace, 
vouchsafed in response to human sin and human faith, are 
inclined to ask for the spiritualization of all politics. But 
the far larger number who believe that Christianity is more 
true than practicable, cling to the scepter of secularism, and 
reject the Cross of sacrificial renunciation. It is abhorrent 
to them that the State should be in the dust, even to serve the 
God of all nations. Enough has been said to vindicate the 
attempt of honest-minded Churchmen to penetrate behind 
Protestantism and Catholicism, and find in their common 
origin the things that shall make for their peace and their 
effective human service. Should the Churches prefer the 
non-communicative isolation which has hitherto been their 
fetish, the charge of these vital human interests which I have 
named may be taken over by destructive forces with lam- 
entable consequences. There are indications that the strug- 
gle for their control is between a Socialism of varying degrees 
of religious belief or non-belief, on the one hand, and Christian 
fraternity on the other. Those who are pledged to the latter 
should remember that the moral values of society emerge, 
not by preachment and debate, but by squarely meeting 
their conditions. If the Church is to meet them, she must not 
only proclaim good will, but augment her social control in 
behalf of its diffusion. Society, as we find it, is infinitely 
distant either from an abandoned depravity or a spotless 
holiness. It is composed of human beings such as we are 
ourselves, who are in the process of becoming, either for 
better or for worse. They are susceptible to religious over- 
tures; they have primary, secondary, and even tertiary re- 
quirements that call for that manifold wisdom of God which 


22 Cf. Albert Schweitzer: ‘‘ The Decay and the Restoration of Civiliza- 
tion,” chapter IV; and, “* Civilization and Ethics,’ chapters X XI and XXII. 


76 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


His Ecclesia is supposed to have and to administer. Their 
spiritual and social movements, past and present, are re- 
vealed in the unfoldings of Church and State. And since the 
latter is the senior of these two all-inclusive human associa- 
tions, to it we turn first for our instruction in well-doing. 


THIRD LECTURE 
THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 


‘‘Like the baseless fabric of this vision, 

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 


Leave not a rack behind.”’ 
SHAKESPEARE: The Tempest, 
Act IV. Scene I. 151 ff 


THIRD LECTURE 
THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 


The genesis of the State — Its evanescent forms — A perfect State is 
imaginary — The Home as the source of the State — The formation 
of the Clan and the Tribe — Their traits as organizations — Tribalism 
and nationalism in Oriental Empires — The City-States of Greece — 
Their great service to human associations — Rome’s constructive 
political genius — The autocracy of the Classic State — Plato’s Ideal 
State — There is no break between ancient, medieval and modern 
States — The Greek period akin to our own — Mediavalism’s fascina- 
tion due to a reaction from modern Intellectualism — The social organ- 
isms subordinate to the Church — Charles the Great and his imperial 
system — The Feudal States — Chivalry as a Christian cult — The 
golden Thirteenth Century — The beginnings of Parliamentary rule — 
The prevalence of the national State in ecclesiastical internationalism — 
The sources of American democracy. 


THE genesis of the State is hidden in the dim prehistoric 
voids of the past. Its development has been compared to 
that of a vast primeval forest. It looks like a thing unsown, 


always living, always dying and renewing its life from age to | & 
age. ‘‘No one has planned and no one has planted it. But ‘ 


it has its laws of growth all the same, and its own grave 
grandeur. Every individual within it, struggling for his own 
life, and reaching up towards the sunlight, contributes not 
only to the variety but to the vast unity of the whole. The 
statesman, the philosopher, the preacher, the legislator, the 
judge, the soldier, the maker of tools, the tiller of the soil; the 
wise and good in every degree, nay, the foolish and wicked, 
by their negative experiments have for successive generations 
shed their lives like forest leaves to make the black soil on 
which our social institutions grow.” ! It awaits every human 
creature at his birth and commandeers the resources of his 

1Sir Henry Jones: ‘‘The Working Faith of a Social Reformer,” p. 17. 

79 


80 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


conscious life. Its summary process excites protests from 
individualists who assert that State control cannot be wisely 
adapted to personal rights. Its annals show that there has 
been no theory of such control that did not have conspicuous 
limitations. Hopeful experiments were comparatively short 
lived; the best constitutional provisions proved to be but 
temporary conveniences. The problems of political rule are 
renewed in every fresh development of civilization; many 
have withstood all previous efforts for their solution. Yet 
without the State men cannot cultivate their intellectual 
and spiritual faculties. Their habits, occupations and desires 
are not well qualified unless they are subordinated to its 
authority. ‘They did not choose it, but it chose them, de- 
creed their outward manner of being, and laid its burdens 
upon them. ‘Their welfare is inconceivable apart from its 
training and partnership in mutual coéperation and loyalty. 

What the relation of the politics of the State is to those 
of the Eternal Order is frequently debated. Without doubt it 
arouses an absorbing devotion almost comparable with those 
offered to the historic religions of the race. Yet patriotic 
passion is by no means invariably associated with the laws of 
supreme righteousness, and its separation from them has 
been the source of evils which impartial historians feel bound 
to condemn. The disparity between patriotism and justice 
has given rise to much moral and religious literature. It can 
only be lessened by the increasing realization in advanced 
States of a world commonwealth that has to be gradually 
evolved out of a purified and exalted race-consciousness which 
is now steadily advancing. Visioned spirits who foresee a 
universal State in which the Highest Will shall reign and 
prosper, are not to be chided for their want of patriotism. 
Far otherwise; their conviction that the State is an emanation 
of one supreme ordination for mankind is preservative of its 
life and power. 

Portrayals of the perfect Commonwealth are found in 
Hellenic and Hebraic writings, which, in turn, have exercised 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 81 


a lasting influence upon later idealistic authors. Their 
optimistic tone pleases the majority; even those who regard 
them as dreamers delight in their dreams.2 Nor can we 
afford to dispense with many ideals of the State which are 
at present inoperative, since some which were formerly 
regarded as impossible of realization have forced their way 
into general acceptance. Yet society is so constituted that 
it quickly resents the interference of ideals with its inherited 
proclivities. The strenuous opposition to the Eighteenth 
Amendment of the American Constitution is an example of 
this resentment. It has no validity in reason. Science, 
education and good morals have outlawed the use of in- 
toxicating liquors as unnecessary even in moderation, and 
dangerous in excess. Nevertheless, the element of theoretical 
excellence which the amendment presupposes traverses some 
very human inclinations. Proposed Utopias will have to 
encounter these inclinations which will not be put down 
without resistance. No system of the doctrinaire that is so 
far ahead of the average citizen as to be out of his sight can 
do much more than challenge his lethargy. The majority of 
them, vague though benevolent, have hitherto failed to 
hasten the tardy growth of the State in moral character and 
resolution. 

For many centuries, however, it was reverenced as the 
arbiter of ethics and religion. Its social and political prin- 
ciples included those of a loftier kind, and governed all alike. 
This domination surpasses in duration that of all other cor- 
porate bodies of mankind. The venerable guilds of trade, 
intercourse, art; even the brotherhoods of ecclesiastical 
beliefs and usages, are juveniles before the age of the State. 
They have had a prolonged tenure and a wide range in 
society, and determined much of its thought and action. 
But their antiquity and strength appear recent and subor- 
dinate in the light of those possessed by the State. 


2Cf. ‘ More’s Utopia,” translated into Modern English by G. C. Richards, 
where the value of such idealizations is discussed at length. 


82 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Notwithstanding its immemorial alliance with humanity, 
another existing institution is prior to the State in point of 
time, and superior to it in sacredness. The household was 
the first association of individuals; within this original unit, 
as Aristotle said, social order, affection and obedience were 
first generated. Its members were made one by the ties of 
consanguinity, which held them in an unbreakable bond. 
Implicit submission to parental authority was the first 
nexus, not only of dwellers under the domestic roof, but of the 
various organizations subsequently derived therefrom. In 
the stern school of the aboriginal home, made imperative by 
the need of food and shelter, were taught the lessons of social 
conservation that underlay the general welfare. Its occu- 
pants shared their gains and losses. Its religions instructed 
them in self-sacrifice for the sake of the family. Those per- 
sons alone were virtuous and honorable who best fulfilled 
their domestic duties. Their gods were the divinities of the 
hearth, the fold, the field, the forest, and the chase. They 
guarded the home, led the clan or the tribe in war, and 
protected them in peace. Nothing within the narrow range 
of primitive ideas was free from patriarchal supremacy, and 
the recognition of rights and their obligations which it en- 
forced has since been verified by experience. So closely were 
responsibilities related under this primal jurisdiction that 
the sin of Achan was viewed as a family offense; its guilt and 
its punishment fell not only upon Achan himself, but upon 
his immediate relatives.® 

When several families coalesced in the clan, its allegiance 
was given to the eldest male descendant, whose seniority 
in some instances had to be qualified by ability for leader- 
ship. Chieftainship required skill in battle, shrewdness in 
debate, and tactfulness in the settlement of internal disputes. 
Right choice of hunting grounds, successful sowing and har- 
vesting of crops, clever manipulation of superstitious beliefs 
and customs, were the principal demands of the position. 

3 Joshua VII. 16 ff. 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 83 


When two or more clans united the tribe was formed. No 
one tribe admitted that another was its superior except under 
compulsion; all asserted their independence, if necessary, 
by force of arms. The traits of family life, interdependence, 
helpfulness, heroism, antipathy to outsiders, persisted in 
tribal life, and eventually became the characteristics of the 
embryonic State. They prevail now in civilized as well as 
uncivilized nations; their vestiges are discernible throughout 
human society. What little we know of the prehistoric races 
is greatly to their credit. In a world of glaciers, moraines, 
morasses, jungles, impassable deserts, seas and mountains, 
where monstrous creatures swarmed, these earlier men and 
women waged and won a desperate struggle for existence 
against almost insuperable odds. Were our knowledge of 
their achievements as complete as that which we have of 
those of leaders of after ages, possibly the latter would have 
to give place to these brave primeval heroes who gained a 
precarious foothold on the planet. The more facile world in 
which we live was begotten by their exertions. To their 
indomitable perseverance, their courage, their alertness 
against imminent and deadly perils, the modern man owes 
not a few of his salient virtues, as well as the basis for his 
conquest of Nature. 


I] 


There are numerous hypotheses concerning the connection 
between tribalism and the nationalism, such as it was, of 
Oriental empires. But the systematic arrangement of 
facts which establish or seem to establish that connection has 
yet to be made. It is fairly certain that City-States existed 
in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. The earliest known kings 
of that region were not the rulers of countries, but of cities; 
of Kish, of Asshur, of Lagash, of Nippur, of Ur, and of 


4Cf. W. Goodsell: ‘‘ A History of the Family as a Social and Educational 
Institution”; Mathilde and Mathias Vaerting: ‘‘ The Dominant Sex ’”’; A. R. 
Wadia: ‘‘ The Ethics of Feminism’; W. F. Lofthouse: ‘* Ethics and the 
Family.”’ 


84. CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Babylon. The City-States of Greece were probably an 
inheritance from these localized kingships. Yet to demon- 
strate that they were is beyond our present knowledge. 
Indications also prevail that Greece borrowed her mytholog- 
ical cults from the Orient, but to prove this is, again, a very 
difficult matter. Scholars who can deal directly with the 
widely diiferent literatures of the Orient, and at the same 
time command the infinite resources of Greek history and 
letters, are exceedingly rare.- Those who are busy recovering 
the scattered remnants of Oriental life have had little time 
for tracing the movements of life and thought in the Hellenic 
peninsula. Whatever migrated from Orientalism and found 
a more hospitable home among the Greeks was transformed 
to suit their ideas and conditions, and therefore is not readily 
recognized. ‘Take as a concrete instance the relative posi- 
tions of sun and moon in mythology and religion. Among 
the Eastern Semites the moon outranked the sun, but it is 
just the opposite in Greece. The value of the moon’s more 
tranquil light to dwellers in tropical climate is obvious. It 
gave them opportunities to resume activity in toil, and espe- 
cially for travel. But in temperate climates the sun’s heat 
ceased to be an enemy and the moon became by so much less 
a friend. The truth is that we are only at the beginning of a 
better understanding of the relation between the Orient and 
Greece, and an extended period of research awaits the learn- 
ing which shall correlate them. 

Considered as dynastic despotisms, the empires of Egypt, 
Assyria and Babylon make a notable exhibit in man’s ad- 
vance beyond tribal affiliations. But they magnified his 
idea of patriarchal absolutism in a monarchy which had 
few restraints, and his idea of the defense of the clan in 
military States that lived and died by the sword. Knowing 
much more than was formerly ascribed to them, they ac- 
complished far less politically than could be reasonably ex- 
pected of them. One of their fruitful reactions was an indirect 
stimulus of those prophecies of Israel, which showed that 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 85 


tyrannical conquerors could not quench man’s desire for a 
higher righteousness or for social justice. But the hankering 
after personal sovereignty enshrined in the pomp and cir- 
cumstance of Egyptian potentates who drove abroad in 
chariots bestudded with precious stones, while millions of 
their slaves and captives died of starvation, or under the 
lash, is yet latent in the Oriental breast. Hierarchical priest- 
ism was often either actually identified with the throne or 
else allowed to dictate its personnel and its policies. Magnif- 
icent princedoms, like those that still linger in the feudatory 
provinces of India, formerly obtained in nearly all Asiatic 
tribes and peoples. Imperial dynasties were ensphered in an 
aura of sacred mysticism. One of the most cherished titles 
of the Pharaohs was “‘Son of the Sun,” borne by each succes- 
Sive sovereign from the Fifth Dynasty downwards. In the 
endless line of dim monarchs who reigned in Egypt, and who 
leave little impression upon the modern mind, one solitary 
figure was remarkable for his idealism. Akhnaton, Pharaoh 
from B. C. 1875 to 1358, was one of the earliest human found- 
ers of a purely religious doctrine. His monotheism, second 
only to that of Christianity for nobility of conception, was 
formulated in an era of gross superstition. When the world 
was committed to war as an end as well as a means, this 
enlightened prince preached peace; practiced honesty, 
simplicity, and frankness; and exemplified the domestic 
virtues. He gave to womanhood and child-life a reverence 
seldom paid them till many centuries later. His spiritual 
ascriptions, hymns, and rituals compare favorably with those 
of the Old Testament. The art which he stimulated surpasses 
that of earlier Greece. His phenomenal personality, as 
delineated by Mr Arthur Weigall, is a striking comment 
upon the Scripture that God has not left Himself without a 
witness at any period.° 

But such a ruler was then as one born out of due time. 
Those who preceded or followed him were of an entirely 

5 Cf. ‘“* The Life and Times of Akhnaton.”’ 


86 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


different kind. Obsequious courtiers and glittering retinues 
enhanced their sway, which was reverenced by the multi- 
tudes, who believed that monarchs were the sons and daugh- 
ters of Heaven. As in the case of China and Japan, royalty 
was too holy and exalted to be seen by its own subjects. 
The Czardom of Russia retained some traces of this king- 
worship to the last, and the late Dowager Empress of China 
was one of its fairly complete modern embodiments. What 
reflexes Eastern races have had toward self-government are 
due, in the main, to their intercourse with Western races. 
Conceptions of democracy have not passed beyond the 
experimental stage in Continental Asia, native Africa, and 
the provinces of the Nearer Kast. Should they do so, the 
change will probably entail some social convulsions, after 
which the practical realization of real democracy may long 
remain problematical. 

It was in Greece that the City-State arose to give mankind 
a type of government, which neither ancient tribalism nor 
Oriental despotism could even imagine. The Hellenic penin- 
sula witnessed a historic intellectual setting of the State 
made by idealists and philosophers who appealed to reason 
in behalf of justice, and blended racial sentiment with the 
irrefutable principles of that justice. They upraised govern- 
ment from autonomy to isonomy: from rule according to 
one’s own law to rule according to equal law.® The rational 
being of the State was lucidly defined and political methods 
devised for its operation. Alien peoples eventually accepted 
its ostensible benefits, and the spread of its laws and edicts 
checked provincial tendencies. Pessimists who are per- 
suaded that the race is at the mercy of envenomed instincts 
which drive it on a downward course, will be puzzled to ex- 
plain the marvellous intervention made in behalf of humanity 
by classic Greece, to which I have referred elsewhere. For 
if some of its projects were ‘‘embossed froth,” far more were 
quick with high intelligence and civic force. Few questions 

6 Cf. B. Bosanquet: ‘‘ The Philosophical Theory of the State,’’ p. 4. 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 87 


have since occupied the political, philosophical, or artistic 
mind that were not Greek in their origin. The thinkers, 
builders, sculptors and statesmen of that nation bequeathed 
to posterity not only its parent metaphysic, its most moving 
drama, its permanent examples of architecture, but also 
some of its best political ideas. By the last bequest civiliza- 
tion has been enriched beyond comparison. The Greek mind 
made swift and true reactions to human organizations and 
struck their balance equitably. Nor were they left sus- 
pended in a metaphysical trance. The Greek language lent 
itself to every practical political measure. Its simplicity, 
conciseness and expressiveness in a certain sense created, 
almost as much as they connoted, some leading concepts of 
human rule and governance. It was impatient of twistings 
and embellishments; compact with a vitality of meaning 
that made excesses abhorrent to the Greek. The suavity 
and moderation of speech which suit the direction of visible 
institutions were its native qualities. It had the appositeness 
and pertinency befitting the most intrepid and cogent 
political reasoners of any age. Gravity and distinction be- 
longed to it. It gave utterance to civic instincts and argu- 
ments which hitherto had been devoid of expression. It was 
the speech of freedom and of right.’ 

Rome’s statesmen inherited from those of Greece. Cicero 
and Seneca alike emphasized the natural equality of the 
human family. For them the Commonwealth was the 
affair of all the people who composed it: a gathering of the 
people associated under a common law and enjoying a com- 
mon weal. They urged that the bond of justice must be 
maintained between rulers and ruled, and Seneca anticipated 
Christian teaching by insisting that the slave was of the 
same nature as his master, and even capable of conferring 
benefits upon him. But these enlightened ideas, which go 
far beyond those of some Greek political philosophers, could 
not avail against the Oriental despotisms which infected 

7Cf. ‘‘ The Legacy of Greece.’ Essays edited by R. W. Livingstone. 


88 CHRISTINAITY AND THE STATE 


Rome after her conquest of the Eastern Empire. Her chief 
strength lay, not in the enlightened principles of solitary 
thinkers, but in her solidarity and practical sagacity. She 
subdued and long held inviolate what Gibbon describes as 
“the fairest portion of the earth, and the most civilized por- 
tion of mankind.”’ Her constructive genius in jurisprudence 
and in colonization, in the founding of cities and the rule of 
alien peoples, is still before us in every reputable court of law 
of every well administered modern State. Not only the 
broken pillars of the Forum, but the deserted fortresses on 
the Empire’s farthest frontiers; the arch at Treves, the 
Temple of Claudius at Colchester, ‘‘the White City” be- 
neath the Wrekin in Shropshire, Hadrian’s Wall on the 
Scottish border, and innumerable other memorials per- 
petuate the valor blended with wisdom of Rome’s imperial- 
ism. The peace she imposed by its dominion, though con- 
stantly interrupted by the wars imposed on her by her great 
domains, was a spacious interlude in which modern civiliza- 
tion, law and citizenship began to be. They were never 
afterwards entirely forfeited. But the dignity and elevation 
Rome bestowed on them, once obscured, were not restored 
until after the lapse of centuries. Neither her legal nor her 
military monuments are so likely to dominate the future 
intelligent mind as are the political concepts of Greece. 
They admonish us that if States would live in the after 
developments of society, they must subordinate their tem- 
poralities to their ideals. These have to be restated, at- 
tached to actual conditions, and involved in the flow of 
human life which survives the nations that originated them. 
It is a hard saying for the patriot, and yet a true one, that 
great Commonwealths, like great characters, find their 
lastingness, not in themselves, but in what they contribute 
to the aggregate of human good. They will perish, but their 
contribution will remain, and by its values they will ulti- 
mately be judged. 

Orientals, Greeks and Romans alike agreed that the entire 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 89 


field of human thought and action was the property of the 
State. Greek colonies, however, were completely independ- 
ent from the first. No other ties save those of sentiment and 
interest existed between them and their planters. Yet what 
strong ties these can be was exemplified by the cohesion of the 
British Empire under the strain of the World War. The one 
exception was Athens, whose colonies, like those of Rome, 
were replicas of the mother State. Domestic, economic, 
social and religious concerns were altogether at the will of 
the State. Roman law allowed no unlimited right of associa- 
tion and its violation was regarded as equivalent to treason. 
One of the chief causes of the persecution of Christianity was 
not, as is so often supposed, religious intolerance, but im- 
perialism’s jealousy and its suppressive instinct for all 
possible rivals.® 

Dean Inge asserts that in the modern State we find only 
the corporate existence of idiwrns, but that the classic 
State laid claims to the rights and offices of the modern 
éxk\nola. He also shows how the better side of Greek 
life suffered under Plato’s successors, who did not even follow 
the best light obtainable from physical knowledge. Their 
luxuriant mythology was the raw material of both poetry 
and science; but it became, for the most part, non-moral, and 
could not instil in the citizens the virtues resulting from 
faith in a universal moral sovereign. For ethical guidance 
they looked not to priests and temples, but to senates and 
legislators. Their flexible conception of State supremacy, 
unmoderated by any exclusively religious beliefs, was fur- 
thered by these leaders of classic antiquity, who left nothing 
to the discretion of the individual. His existence was de- 
clared valueless in itself; only as it served the might of the 


8 The typical Greek colony was neither in origin nor development a mere 
trading post. It was or it became a “ polis,’’ a City-State, in which was re- 
produced the life of the parent State. Cf. Encyclopedia Britannica; Vol. 
XII. Eleventh Edition, Article: ‘*‘ Greek History.”’ 

9 Cf. Herbert B. Workman: ‘“ Persecution in the Early Church,’’ Chapter 
III, ‘‘ The Causes of Hatred,’’ p. 105, ff. 


90 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


State was it worthy of attention. Politics was the sole and 
the indivisible authority; citizenship the sacred calling and 
the seat of all prerogative. None could contend against a 
semi-omnipotent organization which assumed that the 
passengers were made for the ship and not the ship for the 
passengers. No opening was left from which any rebel could 
defy the enclosures of the State or draw a line across its 
activities. The spiritual education of the people, the relief 
of the helpless, the freeing of the slave, the cravings of man’s 
higher nature, obtained nothing from an institution which 
regarded humanity as mere material for the sustentation of 
its life and authority. What the bondsman was in the grasp 
of his owner, the owner was in the grasp of the State. Two 
closely related elements are perceptible in this theory. 
First, the State was viewed as an end in itself, to which the 
individual was an accessory; and, second, since the State was 
co-extensive with human life, it followed that sooner or later 
it would regard its own regnancy as far more important 
than the welfare of the citizen. This theory has been suffi- 
ciently tenacious to withstand every subsequent attack 
upon it, and many millions of men and women have died 
within the last few years to impress upon the world its fatal 
consequences. 

What has been stigmatized as Prussianism is the scarred 
and battered descendant of the far past, with numerous ~ 
indorsements from rulers and legalists of widely separated 
times and nations. They insisted that the highest social 
developments could only be reached by making the State 
supreme, and the individual the acolyte of its supremacy. 
In ancient as in modern days the theory survived all changes. 
Monarchy, oligarchy, aristocracy, democracy are familiar 
forms equivalent to the rule of the one, the few, the select, 
or the whole body of citizenship. But though these forms 
appear and disappear, they do not materially affect the 
absolutism of the State. The nations, then as now, were 
composed of those who inherited the same traditions, spoke 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 91 


the same language, and adhered to the same laws and cus- 
toms. But the State, omnicompetent in human life and 
affairs, like Tennyson’s brook, ‘‘goes on forever.” 1 

Its greatest exponent of antiquity was Socrates, whose 
name is still worth an armed host in its behalf. He con- 
tended that one’s country was higher and nobler than the 
individual, his parents, or any other of his ancestors. The 
reverence of men of understanding and the approval of the 
gods were fixed upon the State, which the Greek philosopher 
personalized and addressed in the speech of entire acquies- 
cence and of homage. Her punishments should be suffered 
in silence, and her commands as implicitly obeyed as though 
they proceeded from a divine source. If they seemed to be 
unjust, the citizen should endeavor to change the mind of the 
State, failing which he was bound to execute her policies and 
endure her penalties without murmur or protest. Socrates, 
however, voiced the sentiments of an exclusive caste of male 
slave-owners, whose ideas of social order assumed the natural 
inequality of human society. Their theory was supported by 
Aristotle, who regarded slavery as a necessity for the higher 
forms of civilization; an opinion echoed by John C. Calhoun 
and his party in the middle period of the nineteenth century. 
When Aristotle inveighed against democracy as an evil form 
of government, the type he visualized was that of an incensed 
and disorderly mob assembled for mischief, without the 
directing reason essential to wise measures, or to their calm 
deliberation. He often suggests but never solves the prob- 
lems arising from the relations of individuals and groups to 
the State. ‘‘And even if we reckon greatness by numbers,”’ 
he says, ‘‘we ought not to include everybody, for there must 
always be in cities a multitude of slaves and sojourners 
and foreigners; but we should include those only who are 

10 ‘* Phe People,’’ a later term elevated by ethical usage, and brought in to 
signify the aggregate of population living under one political organization, 
was originated by the wider sympathies of genuine commonwealths. It 


shows correspondence with the psychical entity of nations, and foreshadows 
a world fraternity which advanced political thinkers desire, 


92 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


members of the State, and who form an essential part 
Opti gis 

These aristocratic views were opposed by the Stoics and 
Epicureans, who regarded them as a scandal upon human 
nature, and leaned towards the assertion of man’s personal 
rights. The moral teaching of the Stoics that there were in 
every individual certain spiritual realities which should be 
respected; that his intellect, his freedom, and his equality 
were birthrights beyond the jurisdiction of the State, par- 
took of a religious character, and supplied one of the classic 
proofs of the folly of framing an indictment against human 
nature. They advanced enlightened social ideas, altogether 
absent from the Socratic theory, that have since been con- 
firmed by the verdicts of civilization. But thinkers like the 
Stoics and the Epicureans are a small minority in this world. 
Thought works too slowly and while it grows the people 
perish for lack of knowledge. Further, it must be conceded 
that Socrates expressed the gist of Greek beliefs, and that 
these beliefs were vital to the continuance of the State as it 
was then constituted. He argued that since none could be an 
end in himself in a ruling society made up of a minority of 
slave owners, all must be its contributory agents. For once 
the unity of the structure was impaired, it was exposed to 
the fanaticism of demagogues, who, beneath the guise of 
patriotism, were intent on promoting their selfish contriv- 
ances. ‘These conclusions have large meanings for modern 
nations. To us, with our ideas, no right seems clearer than 
the right of men to think and speak as they please about 
political matters. But the extreme interpretation which 
Socrates and Aristotle placed upon the State’s control over 
the individual was at least rational. They averred that what 
men of character and ability doubted about would be held as 
doubtful. Dogmatic formulas would be disbelieved or dis- 
regarded. Politics, which was for them the rule of life, and 


i“ The Politics of Aristotle, ’’ translated by Benjamin Jowett. Book VII. 
Chs. IV-V, p. 214 ff. 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 93 


the sanction of law and authority, would dwindle into a set of 
variant opinions. Practice would be made dependent upon 
expediency, and the State would be left jettisoned, without 
certainty about its nature or its obligations. It exists, as we 
know it, to conserve the individual’s rights, to encourage his 
initiative, and to aid him in the discharge of his responsibil- 
ities. Though some contradictory forms of modern com- 
munism are, to a given degree, a revival of the Socratic doc- 
trine, the idea of individuality is very differently construed 
now, and placed in more striking contexts. Yet its independ- 
ence is never to be looked upon as synonymous with license. 
Personal choice and the will to do as one pleases are restrained 
on every side by the requirements of the social order, and are 
subsidiary to the welfare of that order. 

I have said nothing about Plato’s vision of the Ideal State, 
which properly belongs to the literature of lost Utopias. 
Nor is it probable that he believed his ideal could be realized 
in human society. The ethic which always exceeded religion 
in the concepts of Greek philosophers prevailed in Plato’s 
dream. It is more valuable for its gravity and loveliness 
than for its practicability. In the ultimate, man’s intellec- 
tual and moral development is the decisive factor in the 
character and benefit of the State, and this development is 
impossible without a reasonable religious faith. For want of 
it the authority of Greek and Roman States waned and then 
vanished. Yet what peoples they were! What a sense of the 
beautiful, the serene and the just was their’s! What laws 
and literatures they bestowed upon us! If modern inquiry 
shows that heredity, environment, climate, diffused intelli- 
gence, the spread of commerce, and personal gifts or at- 
tainments directly affect the well-being of the State, do not 
ancient nations remind us that its soul is religion? One 
wonders if they could have perished had this truth been 
known and heeded by their great leaders. 


94 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Ill 


The differences between the provinces upon which Greece 
or Rome set their seal, and those that lay beyond their 
boundaries, are plainly perceptible in medieval and modern 
States, and. forbid those divisions of history which are usually 
artificial in proportion as they are precise. There has been 
no actual break between classic and medieval civilization, 
nor between Medizevalism and Modernism, but only intervals 
of depression varied by occasional revivals. Race continuity 
persisted; even a certain continuity of culture made itself 
felt, and the fact of these continuities should mould our con- 
ceptions of the Middle Ages. When we speak of them as 
‘“‘ourblind,”’ as pagan eras, or as ‘‘the dark cavern,’ we but 
pamper a prejudice incapable of correct historic estimates. 
Granted that the medieval writers know no Greek, yet they 
established a literature of their own. The poetry of Chaucer, 
“The Book of Divine Doctrine”’ by St. Catherine of Siena, 
St. Francis’ ‘Canticle of the Sun,” the translations of the 
venerable Bede, the Chronicles of Matthew of Paris, the 
learning and instructions of Abelard, the story of “Sir 
Gawain and the Green Knight,”’ have nothing particularly 
purblind in them. 

Succeeding eras are nearly always severe in their verdicts 
upon those immediately preceding them. The attitude of 
some contemporary intellectuals toward the Victorian au- 
thors and publicists is a case in point.’ There is a strong 
probability that those of the Renaissance were as grossly 
unfair to the medieval artists and scholars. Assuredly they 
were not lacking in moral or spiritual insight. Clairvaux and 
Cluny, Paris and Oxford, did not send out the radiant light 
of Greece, but they sent out the divine light of Christianity. 
The medizvalists are charged with not being classical or 


12 Fashions in things intellectual are as real and as potent as they are in 
women’s dress. A few years ago Neiizsche was all the rage. He was a 
terrible fellow! Today he is remembered only in snatches, 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 985 


artistic, yet they built Chartres and Lincoln. Giotto showed 
what the period could do in painting, and Dante was its 
august interpreter in poetry. Its saints and mystics read 
after a greater Teacher than Plato, and its seers were nearer 
to His Spirit and power than were some of the savants of the 
New Learning. Doubtless medieval teachings were often 
intellectually poverty-stricken; and, as a consequence, the 
ancient ways of civic life became degenerate in due time. It 
was a period of extremes, of humility and pride; of love and 
hate; the ideal and the actual were often far removed from 
each other. Yet its climacteric in St. Francis and in St. Ber- 
nard, whose fame has been somewhat dimmed by that of St. 
Francis, showed that in religion, at any rate, it was no longer 
in a state of transition from the antique, but had attained a 
spirituality wholly its own and one reflected by after times.® 

This kind of spirituality finally determines the fate of 
States. Thoughtful people may be thankful for their relation 
with Greek and Roman ancestries. Statesmen and _his- 
torians may obtain from them in the critical moments of 
society those examples and precedents, rules and methods, 
that serve the present age. Yet in men’s highest moods they 
confess that the needed guidance for individuals and for 
nations is not to be had from classic thinkers and rulers. 
The torch of knowledge can be rekindled in Athens, as can 
that of human justice in Rome. But for the light within 
that comes from beyond, inquiring minds repair to the 
Hebrew prophets and the Christian Apostles: 


‘‘As men divinely taught, and better teaching 

The solid rules of Civil Government 

In their majestic unaffected style, 

Than all the cratory of Greece and Rome. 

In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, 

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, 

What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat.”” (Paradise Regained) 
13 Cf. H. O. Taylor: ‘*The Medieval Mind,’ Vol. I. Chapters XVIII 


and XIX on Saint Bernard and Saint Francis, p. 408, ff; Chapter X XI, ‘‘ The 
Spotted Actuality,” p. 487, ff. 


96 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


The hold which Medixvalism has gained upon some artistic 
and religious groups today is not to be ascribed to the fascina- 
tions of Gothic architecture, or of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. 
Nor is it rightly explained as a recrudescence of superstitions 
and symbolisms repudiated by scientific intelligence. Its 
strength lies where it always lay, in the craving of men and 
women for authoritative certainty about religion and their 
own souls. Life is soon over, death is impatient, some fixed 
beliefs seem essential as to their meanings here and hereafter. 
Such beliefs, Medizevalism, despite its errors and faults, pro- 
fessed to give, whereas much Modernism bids us have cour- 
age in our darkness, or faintly glimpse the larger hope. 
However unthought or unstudied any system of a social or 
religious character may be which ends this suspense, it will 
make a powerful appeal to certain temperaments. Again, 
the recurrent life forces that ebb but to flow again bring 
with them reversions to the past. Intellectual wisdom 
emanates from Greece; political wisdom from Rome; faith 
in the unseen is vibrant everywhere in the Middle Ages. 
Why should not they draw men and women back at crucial 
moments? Nothing in them addressed mentality alone. 
The consciousness of Church and State related itself in every 
way to religion and to Deity. Spiritual belief and duty 
seemed more simple then than they seem now. Certain 
childlike qualities making him unaware of that vastness of the 
universe which has burned the modern man’s sense of noth- 
ingness into his very soul, never fell away from the medizval 
man. Conscious communion with God often took on the 
semblance of sense perception. ‘The apparent testimonies 
of an invisible realm which have become shadowy to myriads 
of our time were then intensely realistic. 

Modern unfamiliarity with medieval life exaggerates its 
charm, just as the archaisms of an older poet’s verse give it a 
prestige it does not wholly deserve. Yet for those who are 
not absorbed by outward things excursions into its tranquil 
regions have their reward. The dearth of modern religious 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 97 


life in certain directions causes many to feel that, though the 
people of the Middle Ages doubtless were dirty, ignorant and 
miserable, they made trial of their times as we have not done 
of ours, and possessed some gifts and graces which this age 
could use to advantage. The mysteries that stirred their 
souls are no longer mysteries to us; some indeed are infantile 
puerilities. But the verities they steadfastly believed are not 
entombed, as too many imagine, in the cathedrals and 
monasteries of continental Europe, Great Britain and Ire- 
jiand. Not even Dante’s poetry, retrospective though it was, 
gave complete expression to the medizval mind. Behind his 
epic, as behind lordly minsters and sacerdotal observances, 
there was a theology, a philosophy, a ritual, a polity, which 
subordinated the social organism in Church and State to the 
Christian doctrine. Perhaps this surrender to a religion so 
backward in learning was unwise; assuredly it was uncondi- 
tional. But though we affirm our possession of that religion 
in purer forms, it has not triumphed in Modernism as it did 
in Medizevalism. The intellectual ugliness, political dis- 
honesty and international malpractice of some modern and 
demoralized nations arise in large measure from their revolt 
against changeless spiritual laws. This revolt in turn is due 
to that lack of religious authority, the want of which de- 
stroyed an ancient civilization in some respects superior to 
our own. 

It is therefore requisite in dealing with Mediszvalism’s 
grotesque admixtures, its virtues and its vices, that we 
should recognize in it the ever present spirit which dedicated 
outward things to religious purposes. Nor did its leaders 
invariably suppose, as some modern thinkers have stated, 
that religious formulas solve religious problems — an as- 
sumption contradicted by the difficulties which multiply 
in the face of its superficial treatment. They knew that 
those problems originated, not in doctrines and theories, but 
in life’s factors, and that they could be solved only by dealing 
directly with those factors. The statement applies to the 


98 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


theocratic State of Medisevalism. Had it not enforced its 
dictates upon all and sundry, it could hardly have survived 
its hostile environment. This enforcement is not discounted 
by railings against its legitimacy. Its large-hearted and 
level-headed consideration better becomes us than heated 
assertions of our own superiority. The Medieval State, as a 
part of the Church Universal, can hardly fail to have interest 
for every lover of State and Church. Let us study it un- 
embarrassed by present shibboleths, or by catchwords of the 
part enlisted against the whole, or by the sentiments of 
provincialism. 


IV 


The first obstacle the Middle Ages had to encounter was 
the social submergence and anarchy which followed the 
Fall of Rome. Not only normal and human, but abnormal 
and inhuman elements permeated the results of that event. 
How far the victorious Teuton was better than the defeated 
Latin is not a settled question. But it is a settled question 
that the European peoples who had been ruled by Rome have 
been the progenitors of modern civilization. There is no 
space to discuss here in detail the clans and kingdoms that 
emerged from the debris of her destruction. Visigoths, 
Ostrogoths, Saxons, Alemanni, Bavarians, Lombards and 
Vandals — each group had its place and part in the gradual 
evolution of the Medizval State.‘4 But the solitary and 
dominating figure arising out of the chaos of society was that 
of Charles the Great, who was a Christian king before he 
became the belated successor of pagan Emperors. His 
grandfather, Charles Martel, had already lessened the 
power of territorial bishops, by assuming sovereign rights 
over their appointment and deposition. The second son of 
Charles Martel’s son Pepin, Charles, fell heir to domains 


14 Cf. R. W. Church: “ Beginning of the Middle Ages’; H. B. Workman: 
“ The Foundation of Modern Religion’’; André Lagarde: ‘‘ The Latin Church 
in the Middle Ages”; F. J. Foakes Jackson: ‘‘ An Introduction to the History 
of Christianity, A. D. 590—-1314.”’ 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 99 


extending from the Bohemian frontier to the Atlantic ocean, 
and from the North Sea to the Alps and the Pyrenees. His 
compact with the Papacy sanctioned its canon law, and 
surrendered the administration of the Church to the hi- 
erarchy, reserving to him the temporal power. This he held 
as its over-lord; the benefices of the bishoprics remained at 
his discretion, and his capitularies regulated much of the rule 
of the Church.” 

But far more important than these arrangements was 
his self-elevation to the primacy of Christendom, in which the 
Pope was spiritual Emperor, and Charles a secular Pope. 
Europe then became a Papacy in religious matters, and a 
feudalistic State in civil affairs. Lord of the ecclesiastical 
hierarchy whose ideal was a Christian Republic, patron of 
the Holy See, master of mighty armies, Charles, despite his 
want of education, combined love of law and a deep regard 
for justice with a superb gift of organization. He was at 
once a conservative and a reformer, a soldier and a philan- 
thropist, a loyal churchman and a resolute foe of clerical 
usurpations. The Christmas Eve of the year 800 is the date 
of the death of the old world and of the birth of the new. 
During High Mass in the Basilica of St. Peter’s on that 
historic night, the Pontiff placed on the Emperor’s head the 
diadem of the Cesars, and saluted him as ‘Charles, the 
most pious Augustus, crowned of God, great and peace 
giving Emperor.’ After the interruption of centuries of 
comparative barbarism, the Church again found herself in 
possession of a world-wide power." 


15 Cf, ‘‘ The Cambridge Medieval History.”’ Vol. II. Chs. XIX and XXI. 

16 In number the men who promoted the scholarly interests of the Car- 
lovingian period were few, and fewer were the places where they throve. 
There was the central group of open-minded laymen and churchmen about 
the palace school, or following the court in its journeyings, which were far 
and swift. Then there were monastic or episcopal centers of education as at 
Tours, or Rheims, or Fulda. The scholars carried from the schools their 
precious modicum of knowledge, and passed on through life as educated 
men living in the world, or dwelt as learned compilers, reading in the cloister. 
But the rays of their enlightening influence were scanty enough in that 
period’s encompassing ignorance. 


100 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Since the nations of Europe did not then exist, the im- 
perialism of Charles was the buttress of the rights of the 
State. How necessary its protection was became manifest 
after his death in 814, an event which let loose endless 
confusions that ran amuck for two hundred years. National 
sentiment was incipient in the crop of kinglets which sprang 
up in every province, and somewhat active in the higher 
clergy who undermined the authority of the Frankish Empire 
for the sake of their ecclesiastical privileges. Eventually, 
the follies of rulers, the gradual dismemberment of the 
system which Charles had established, and the decline of 
Papal authority left the great barons and prince-bishops 
free to do as they would. Some ruled well, others ill, but 
all ruled arbitrarily. Feudalism arose to pillage merchants, 
freeholders and peasants, to domineer over helpless mon- 
archs, and to clash with the episcopacy. The elevation of 
the nobility in the State degraded every other rank and 
condition. It seldom forgot its internal strifes, except when 
its members united to harass the Church or to oppress the 
populace. Self-constituted conquerors and military adven- 
turers prevented national expansion and prosperity through- 
out Europe. The Norsemen invaded and plundered Great 
Britain and the eastern coasts of France and Ireland. The 
Hungarians harried the Rhine Valley and camped under the 
walls of Capua. Saracenic armies garrisoned the seaport 
towns of Italy. Robber colonies infested the border lands 
of every State. The outcome of this turbulence was the 
setting up of royal dynasties as the symbol of State unity, 
and the restoration of the Empire under the House of Hohen- 
staufen. Monarchs who were nothing more than meek 
patrons could not keep the peace of Europe. A species of 
nationalism which had proved disastrous to political and 
religious unity, was now to be subordinated to the Holy 
Roman Empire in its renewed form. But the subsequent 
controversy between the Empire and the Papacy, to be 
presently related, ended a compact which had unified religion, 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 101 


federalized Europe, given kingship a sacred character, 
embodied beneficial theories of the State and of the obliga- 
tions of nations. 

Those who complain of this alliance of Church and State 
should consider that the spirit of ageless paganism which 
dwelt in society, could not be expelled except by their united 
power. Theologians and priests insisted that the Church 
was not in the State, but the State in the Church, because she 
threw her influence into the scale of lawful authority against 
that of cut-throats and bandits. Men attached themselves to 
clerics whose minds were stored with the knowledge of the 
Scriptures and of the Latin Fathers. In the poverty of their 
own ideas, to whom else could they go? It was the Church 
which furnished rulers, statesmen, scholars, and supplied 
governmental methods that appear reactionary to the un- 
informed, but were a marked advance on anything else of the 
kind existing then.” Between the time of the first appear- 
ance of Christianity within the Roman Empire and that of 
its spread far beyond the Empire’s frontiers, its teachings 
had been dogmatically formulated in a Church which had in- 
herited the organizing genius of Rome. ‘This finished system, 
which claimed divine approval, was endowed with the sur- 
viving culture of a former civilization, and thus presented 
to the unsophisticated and unlettered peoples of Europe. It 
offered them supernatural aid, and a better knowledge and 
control of life than they had, or could obtain elsewhere. The 
manner of its presentation hastened its acceptance. Its 
missionary activities brought it numberless converts, whose 
loyalty to the Holy See, like that of generations to come, was 
assured and contented. Their’s was the attitude of felt 
ignorance before recognized wisdom; of obedient and affec- 
tionate children who worshipped the Church as the Mother 
of the State and of their individual and collective good. The 
social development of Europe was hastened by this imperial 
propagation of Christianity. For centuries the Northern as 

17 Cf. Lord Acton: ‘‘ The History of Freedom,”’ p. 33, ff. 


102 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


well as the Southern peoples were to be held in willing sub- 
mission to the constitution and forms of Medizvalism, which 
they had thus received. ‘They continued to revere the 
Roman source of Christian teachings, and to look with awe 
upon the sanctity and knowledge that encompassed them. 

During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Feudalism 
was the corner stone of the State, the social system par 
excellence which maintained government, enacted legislation 
and administered justice. The only power capable of resist- 
ing its control was that of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and 
they collided when the progress of Feudalism in Teutonic 
States threatened the independence of the Church by sub- 
jecting her prelates to the secular princes. A word describing 
so remarkable a system is necessary at this point. The 
monarch was the sole land-owner; and dukes, counts, barons, 
knights, bishops or abbots took their title to the land, either 
directly or mediately from him. In return for their holdings 
they were pledged to render military service, and under cer- 
tain contingencies, monetary aid to the king as head of the 
State. His tenants had sub-tenants of their own, some of 
whom were freemen, but the majority bondsmen. Even the 
free cities of the Middle Ages, which were antagonistic to 
Feudalism, both in spirit and organization, were forced to 
compromise with it.® 

Like all social systems it is to be considered not only for its 
evil but for its good; for the difficulties it overcame, and the 
dangers it avoided. Its exactions were often softened by the 
introduction of Chivalry, which was grafted upon Feudalism 
by the Church. Although the ethic of Chivalry was in- 
trinsically militaristic it had its ameliorative side. Its 
influence has been exaggerated by romanticists who depict 
it as asking that flowers should always spring in its path to 
birth. It is to be understood as a beneficial, and for a time, a 


18 Cf. © Foundations of Society ’’ by P. Vinogradoff in ‘‘ Fhe Cambridge 
Medizval History,’’ Vol. II. Chapter XX; and ‘“‘ Feudalism ’’ by P. Vinogra- 
doff in zd, Vol. III. Chapter XVIII. 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 103 


vigorous attempt to apply some Christian precepts and 
typical masculine virtues to human conduct. It also brought 
into social relationships an ideal quality which still pervades 
them. Its precepts were no more universally obeyed than 
are those of the best kind today; but it rediscovered not a 
few gracious fellowships, and gave woman a moral status 
unknown to antiquity. Under its impulse, rough untutored 
warriors became urbane and gallant gentlemen who modified 
the turbulence that threatened the first feeble motions of 
nationalism. The story of Sir Lancelot idealizes the process. 
His geniality of soul, the shining qualities of his knighthood, 
the worshipful affection he bore for the advancement of 
right, and for the defense of his dearest one, are mirrored in 
the tale. Adventures in which other knights had found their 
undoing ended well for him, because of the love that shone 
high and clear over his quest. But for Chivalry, we probably 
should never have heard of Sir Lancelot, nor of the Beatrice 
of Dante, nor of the Laura of Petrarch, nor of Shakespeare’s 
Miranda, nor of Goethe’s Marguerite. Its adoration of the 
Virgin, although not equally helpful all round, was a religious 
source of its moral resolves; and its professed reverence for 
purity in woman was a protest against the pagan ideas which 
insisted on her static inferiority.” 

Between the years 1100 and 1500, the State gradually 
attained stability and power. Its vested interests and social 
efficiency increased apace. Religious and political progress 
was unhindered by the chaos that had ensued after the ruin 
of the Roman and Frankish Empires. It has been suggested 
that this was the constitutional period of English-speaking 
nations, and that the parliamentarians of the seventeenth 
century who reduced the royal prerogative, were reclaiming 
their former rights rather than asserting new ones. Some 
historians indorse the view that the Lancastrian dynasty 


19Cf. G. G. Coulton: “ Five Centuries of Religion,’’ Vol. I, Chapters 
IX-XI on ‘‘ The Mother of God,” ‘‘ The Gospel of Mary,’ and ‘‘ Women 
and the Faith,” p. 138, ff. 


104 CHRISTIANITY, AND THE STATE 


conceded precedents valuable to future democratic States. 
Others contend that these concessions have been over- 
estimated, and that Coke, Pym, Eliot, Hampden and their 
fellow patriots went beyond all Lancastrian precedents. 

We return from this digression to observe that for four 
hundred years, Europe enjoyed a comparative peace which 
the black magic of no Attila, Napoleon or Hohenzollern 
disturbed. For once in a millennium the dynasties, raised to 
power by statecraft or the sword, gave a respite to war-torn 
humanity. The political sciences outran those of armed 
violence, and consequent moral and religious advantages 
were gained during the late twelfth and the thirteenth cen- 
turies. The age of Aquinas, Roger Bacon, St. Francis, St. 
Louis, Giotto and Dante can be safely regarded as the most 
purely spiritual, most really constructive and most truly 
philosophical period of Medizvalism. 


Vv 


In every way it is borne in upon us that its society con- 
formed to no one type. The character and attainments of 
Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, Italians and other na- 
tions exhibited their usual diversities, which also differed 
from those of their Teutonic, Celtic, Gallican and Latin 
ancestors. Yet, as we have seen, they had some things in 
common, which have not been approved by all modernists. 
They are accused of a dry theology, of a useless metaphysic, 
and of monastic selfishness. But it is very doubtful if 
medieval progress was at any time paralyzed by two of the 
strongest and basest of human motives — greed and fear — 
as modern progress has been paralyzed by them. The prac- 
tices of the period, like those of our own, were never so good 
and seldom as bad as appearances indicated. When it drew 
near its end it gave birth in the great thirteenth century to 
Modernism. A phenomenal outbreak of religious devotion 
relieved the hearts made sick by hopes deferred. Behind its 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 105 


vitalizing advance came the inventive fertility, imaginative 
wealth, and spiritualized ideas, upon which Frederic Harrison 
pours fervent praise. In statesmanship, he tells us, it can 
only be matched by comparing the age with that of Pitt and 
Burke, of Washington and Marshall. There was no discord 
in its development; kings, priests, prophets, poets, teachers, 
evangelists, artists and artisans were of one mind and pur- 
pose; and could knit together, according to one design, the 
symmetrical social fabric which was their chief ambition. 
Mr. Harrison’s statement that it cannot be called in any 
special sense the material, the devotional, the political or the 
poetical age, since it was equally and all of these combined, 
should perhaps be qualified. But doubtless its united belief 
and worship, its single code of manners, its uniform social 
discipline and education conferred upon the thirteenth 
century an honorable distinction far beyond that usually 
attributed to Medizvalism at any time. 

Those who deprecate the idea of solidarity in Church and 
State are not sustained by references to that age. It was 
blessed with unities that for a brief moment overcame men’s 
divisive tendencies. One Church, one sacred language, one 
accepted type of beauty, gave to the European peoples their 
current ideals of the good, the true and the esthetic. Albert 
and Aquinas had no peers in philosophic range till Descartes 
came. Roger Bacon was far more worthy of fame’s tribute 
than the Chancellor who bore his surname. These thinkers 
were not afraid of life. They could visualize its meanings and 
codrdinate its knowledge in some subjective systems which 
did not die till their work was done. The Universities, headed 
by Paris, were the centers of an eager culture, and the 
“‘schools”’ of the nations gave full stature to the Universi- 
ties..° Besides Paris, there were those of Oxford, Orleans, 
Toulouse, Montpelier, Cordova, Seville, Toledo and Bologna. 
Great cathedrals arose which still reveal to us more religion, 


20 Cf. Hastings Rashdall: ‘“‘ The Universities of Europe in the Middle 
Ages.”’ 


106 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


more humanity, more individual and collective aspiration 
than the reading of many books about the century.”! Macau- 
lay, in spite of his utilitarian outlook, waxes eloquent, even 
for him, over its achievements. He likens them to mountain 
fastnesses out of which the largest rivers flow to fertilize the 
plains below. Its annals, he tells us, may seem sterile and 
obscure to the unobservant, yet in them are contained the 
secrets of present freedom and democracy. ‘Then and there, 
Christian Europe began to exhibit those saving merits which 
it has since in part retained, and which enabled it to colonize 
America and transmit civilizing forces to Asiatic and African 
lands. The political doctrines of the English State, which 
have preserved their identity through all successive changes, 
were for the first time clearly ascertained and stated. ‘Then 
first appeared with distinctness that Constitution of which 
all the other free Constitutions in the world are copies, and 
which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the 
best under which any great society has ever yet existed dur- 
ing many ages. Then it was that the House of Commons, 
the archetype of all the representative assemblies which now 
meet, either in the Old or in the New World, held its first 
sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dig- 
nity of a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival 
of the imperial jurisprudence. ... Then it was that the 
most ancient colleges which still exist at both the great 
nation’s seats of learning were founded. Then was formed 
that language, less musical, indeed, than the languages of the 
south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest 
purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, in- 
ferior to the tongue of Greece alone. Then, too, appeared 
the first dawn of that noble literature, the most splendid 
and the most durable of the many glories of England.” 
Not only in Britain, but also in the principal countries of 


21 Cf. Frederic Harrison: ‘‘A Survey of the Thirteenth Century,” in 
“The Meaning of History,” p. 145, ff. Also James J. Walsh: ‘‘ The Thir- 
teenth: Greatest of Centuries,’’ pp. 1-17. 

22“ History of England,’’ Everyman’s Library Edition. Vol. I. p. 21. 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 107 


Europe the idea that culture and not race is the foundation 
of a second Statehood was advocated by scholars and teach- 
ers. It was a time of fusion, when the last traces of conquest 
temporarily disappeared beneath the rising tides of human 
consciousness. Even its sculptures are separated from those 
of the twelfth century by a wider gap than any that divides 
the two periods in law or in language. At the root of the 
matter, as touching law and constitution, those changes 
were made at that time which left future ages little to do but 
improve in their details. The political and social institutions 
of England, France and Germany gradually assumed those 
forms that characterize European and American nations 
today. The last six hundred years of their story were here 
marked off from the six hundred years that had gone before. 

No generalizations, however broad, can include the totality 
of world forces that operated in the thirteenth century. Nor 
are we to suppose that it was a solely creative period. Dur- 
ing its years the Eastern Empire fell beneath the arms of the 
Frank, and the Eastern Caliphate before the arms of the 
Mogul. The Western Empire suffered defeat by the Papacy, 
and the soldiers of the Cross were driven from the Holy 
Land. Nevertheless, whatever happened in “this age of 
wonder” or afterwards —- when wave after wave of change 
pounded over Europe, while Venice became the mistress of 
the Eastern seas and Florence stood out as the new type of 
democratic freedom, when the nominal kingship of the 
lords of Laon and Paris expanded into the broad realm of 
Philip Augustus and Philip the Fair— the temporal and 
spiritual gains of the thirteenth century enumerated here 
remained to its honor and for the lasting good of humanity.” 

Those who enter the Medieval State through the gateway 
of Chaucer’s joyous poetry or of Gothic architecture, may 
find it difficult to reconcile their gladness, grace and power 
with the physical and moral wretchedness of the European 
peasants and artisans. The uprisings of the Jacquerie in 

23 Cf. E. A. Freeman: ‘‘ The Norman Conquest,” Vol. V. p. 439. 


108 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


France and of the rebels of England’s south-eastern shires, 
apparently confute the eulogies the historians quoted be- 
stowed upon Medievalism. The explanation is that the re- 
vival of life and progress of the thirteenth century was fol- 
lowed in the fourteenth by an orgy of feudal misrule and 
violence. The Hundred Years War between France and 
England, the dismemberment of France, the Wars of the 
Roses, the distractions of Spain and the decadence of the 
Empire destroyed many of the fairest prospects of Europe. 
Until monarchs like Louis XI, Ferdinand V, Charles V, and 
the English Tudors suppressed Feudalism, it terrorized the 
State and kept the middle classes in subjection. Like the 
expiring Imperialism of our day, it took a heavy toll before 
it finally disappeared.?* 


VI 


The love of liberty as part of the universal good, which even 
the poorest serf felt, and the hate of liberty as a detestable 
innovation which animated his oppressors, were then as 
now, polar instincts in Church and State. For princes and 
prelates who were intent on their unity, and on that preserva- 
tion of loyalty to both which, as they conceived, determined 
the welfare of men and women in this world and the next, 
obedience was the first lesson of social progress. For those 
who were forced to obey, freedom was the first condition of 
any progress. Yet obedience was well worth learning, even 
though it required ages to make it an instinctive motor reac- 
tion. By the steady pressure of its authority the Medieval 
Church-State modified the very brain tissues of Christendom, 
inculcating habits of thought and psychic qualities which 
will endure as long as European and American civilization 
lasts. But the revolts of the longsuffering populace against 
the relentless discipline betokened its approaching end. 


*4 Cf. F. Melian Stawell and F. S. Marvin: ‘‘ The Making of the Western 
Mind,”’ Chapters XVII to XX, 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 109 


Further, the changing geographical situation, and its re- 
sultant economic conditions, were inexorably stronger than 
the once all-powerful union of Papacy and Empire. Natural 
rights overturned monarchical, ecclesiastical and feudal 
supremacy. The reaction against unlicensed power began 
in the reign of Henry the Third of England, reached its high 
water mark in the fourteenth century, and did not recede 
until it had increased the independence of nations, and made 
wide openings for their existence as separate States. Not 
only the Jacquerie of France and the peasants who followed 
Wat Tyler to Smithfield, London, but the Albigenses of 
Languedoc and the Hussites of Bohemia were restive under 
a conservatism which had been too dearly purchased to be 
wisely catholic. ‘‘Poor men,” cried Wyclif, “have naked 
sides and dead walls have great plenty of waste gold”: a 
bitter cry indeed, and one into which, as Principal Workman 
comments, ‘‘half the Reformer’s social writings could be 
compressed.” 

In 1381 it looked as though the ardent hopes of the thir- 
teenth century had been extinguished in blood and fire. 
England and France were under the spell of militarism. Their 
governments were weakened by anarchy from below and 
by despotism from above. Religion sank into a decline which 
the break down of the monastic orders aggravated. Yet 
public order survived, and feudal princes and lords were 
taught to beware of their hitherto despised underlings. 
After the visitations of the Black Death, agrarian problems 
multiplied, and the rural populations showed an unwonted 
self-assertion. Serfdom began to die by general consent. 
Barons moved more cautiously among their dwindling pre- 
rogatives and claims, because they recalled the possibilities 
for reprisal that slumbered in the proletariat. The consti- 
tutional changes already discussed brought into the English 
State the Parliament, which was recruited from county 
families that had long been active in local affairs. The 
embarrassments of the Crown were the opportunities of 


110 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


more liberal minded citizens. They remembered as English- 
men the prestige of the Saxon Witenagemot, and of the 
great Charter which had been wrung from King John, the 
abjest and least scrupulous of the Norman princes. Before 
the Parliament, of which they were the original members, had 
been in existence two hundred years as an institution, it had 
asserted its authority in a memorable manner. In spite of 
its then extremely limited representation, it deposed four 
monarchs, and conferred a legal title upon three new dynas- 
ties. 

Upon the Continent the quarrels of Pontiffs and Emperors 
which persisted intermittently for four centuries, resulted 
in the humiliation of both antagonists. Papalists and 
Imperialists strove for absolute authority only to invalidate 
it. Both were at last compelled to appeal to the peoples oi 
Kurope as the final court for its assignment, and they began 
to believe it would be a good thing to reserve it for them- 
selves. In the distresses of spiritual and temporal overlords 
who had brooked no rival, the civil and religious liberties of 
modern States were born. Guelfs who fought for the Papacy 
and Ghibellines who fought for the Empire, alike acknowl- 
edged a third estate destined to eclipse these ancient sov- 
ereignties. Once the appeal was taken, it released a flood of 
elucidations and propositions. ‘The large hearted giant of 
Scholasticism, St. Thomas Aquinas, showed with his accus- 
tomed penetration that laws derive their sanction from the 
nation, and are not binding without its consent. Marsiglio 
of Padua, whom we shall meet again as by far the ablest 
writer and apologist for the Imperialists, agreed in substance 
with the declaration of St. Thomas. 

Luther’s dramatic entry at the Diet of Worms in 1520, did 
not avert his condemnation by Charles the Fifth. But the 
Emperor’s edict was a temporizing measure of political 
exigencies which he could not overcome. Nor should it be 
forgotten that the Diet over which he presided also indicted 
the Holy See for its notorious evils. Since the Reformation, 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 111 


the State has repeatedly deposed the Church in Catholic as 
well as in Protestant countries. Various reasons were given 
for her deposition, but the essence of all was that she tres- 
passed upon an ever growing State authority essential to 
nationalism. So the building of the modern State became 
the task of patriots and the goal of history. Even the doc- 
trine of the ‘Divine Right” of monarchy was little more 
than an impersonalization of State supremacy against the 
claim of international ecclesiasticism to rule the world. In 
England, France and Germany it wrought good as well as 
evil. Americans should deal gently with it, since the colonial 
settlements out of which their Republic originated, would 
have been humanly impossible had not the island kingdom 
of the Tudors set up housekeeping for itself. Always iso- 
lated, independent, and stubborn when aroused, England 
had never been as docile as Continental Catholicism desired, 
nor felt the need of Continental life for a federal rule. One 
of Henry the Eighth’s subservient parliaments proclaimed 
that monarch Head of the Church, not only to satisfy his 
degraded lusts, but also to insure the integrity of the State. 
He deserves no consideration, and his relation with Angli- 
canism has been a historic reproach that was widely mis- 
understood then as it is now. Sir Thomas More and Bishop 
Fisher, who denied the royal supremacy, which numerous 
other English churchmen only accepted under duress, went 
to the scaffold for their convictions. But the Crown and the 
Nation which the Crown represented were at last free to 
follow their own course. In France the legal authorities 
increased the absolutism of kingship in Church and State, 
establishing the Concordat of 1516 as their instrument for 
that purpose. Under the Houses of the Valois and the Bour- 
bons the Gallicanism of royalty supplanted that of the 
parliaments and the universities, practically placing the 
Church at the disposal of the monarchy. The framework 
of the parliamentary system of Spain which links together 
the fortunes of Church and State, is now the oldest in Europe: 


112 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


In Germany and Geneva, Lutheranism and Calvinism based 
their theory of the State upon a natural rather than a political 
analogy, to which further reference will be made. All rule 
being derived from God, the State was the medium of the 
Church, and the Church the source of those ideals that are 
vital to the State. While civil in form, the laws of nations 
were sacred in origin. Protestantism gained princely ad- 
herents because their rights and claims throve upon that 
diminution of ecclesiastical prerogatives, which was hastened 
by the secularization of the Pontificate. 

In this rapid review it should be noted that the constitu- 
tional history of England, which directly affects that of all 
other English-speaking peoples, has been revised and cor- 
rected during the last fifty years. The idea of the Victorian 
historians that nearly everything equitable in political 
institutions is traceable to the primitive democracy of Teu- 
tonic ancestors, has been very much modified. The Barons 
at Runnymede and the Parliament convened by Simon de 
Montfort, were not endeavoring to regain the lost liberties 
which England owed to Hengist and Horsa. They were 
endeavoring to transform the absolutism of monarchy into a 
limited rule. This they succeeded in doing, and though the 
constitutionalism of the fourteenth and following centuries 
was at first feeble, and at after intervals almost non-existent, 
it paved the way for the Puritan Revolution which ended the 
Tudor type of Crown governance. From the accession of 
the Stuarts onward, the struggle between the royal preroga- 
tives and those of Parliament was compromised by the 
arrangement which gave the Crown the forms of power but 
reserved its realities for the Parliament. 

Some American conceptions of popular sovereignty were 
evolved out of the Puritan Revolution, others were obtained 
from the contact of the Pilgrims with Continental Protestan- 
tism in Holland. The French Encyclopedists played their 
part in the process, giving to Jefferson and the patriots who 
agreed with him not a few basic ideas of democracy. But 


THE GROWTH AND PURPOSE OF THE STATE 113 


the inescapable atmosphere and traditions of a thousand years 
of Anglo-Saxon life and law are discernible in the leading 
ideas of our constitutionalists, especially of Washington, 
Franklin, Hamilton, Madison and Marshall. Other streams 
of thought and influence flowed into the life of this Repub- 
lic, and not all have been of equal purity.2> Vapid talkers, 
men of mere words, wind-bags, have too large a vogue Just 
now. The hopes placed upon them are destined to be dis- 
appointed. Their interpretations of the voice of the 
people makes it resemble the bleating of the sheep. The 
nation which has helped to lead the way of the world’s 
progress has come to the margin where other powerful States 
preceded her. Some of these, like Spain, chose wrongly and 
decreased; others, like Britain, chose wisely and increased. 
Upon America’s choice, and that of kindred peoples, depend, 
so far as one can foresee, the character and fortunes of the 
future State. ‘‘When half gods go the gods arrive,’ and we 
ean rest firmly in the faith that our well-intentioned citizens 
shall not want for a leadership worthy of the mission of this 
Republic. 
26 Cf. Nicholas Murray Butler: ‘‘Building the American Nation.”’ 









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FOURTH LECTURE 
THE MODERN STATE 


Let us now praise famous men, 

And our fathers that begat us. 

The Lord manifested in them great glory, 
Even his mighty power from the beginning. 
Such as did bear rule in their kingdoms, 
And were men renowned for their power, 
Giving counsel by their understanding, 
Such as have brought tidings in prophecies: 
Leaders of the people by their counsels, 
And by their understanding men of learning for the people; 
Wise were their words in their instruction: 
Such as sought out musical tunes, 

And set forth verses in writing: 

Rich men furnished with ability, 

Living peaceably in their habitations: 

All these were honored in their generations, 
And were a glory in their days. 


Their seed shall remain for ever, 

And their glory shall not be blotted out. 

Their bodies were buried in peace, 

And their name liveth to all generations. 

Peoples will declare their wisdom, 

And the congregation telleth out their praise. 
Kcclesiasticus XLIV. 1 ff. 


FOURTH LECTURE 
THE MODERN STATE 


The Renaissance and the Reformation produced radical results in every 
walk of life — Erasmus and the Humanists need to be impartially ap- 
praised — The leaders of the sixteenth century were men of extraor- 
dinary caliber, peculiarly fitted for their tasks in that period of religious, 
social and political transition — Luther and Calvin — Lutheranism 
and Calvinism compared — The spacious days of Queen Elizabeth — 
The Puritan and Pilgrim testimony and the settlements in the New 
World — The misrule of George III, the American Revolution and 
Clive’s conquest of India — The uprising of European democracy, the 
industrial revolution and the rise of the modern State. 


The Reformation period, like the Victorian, was so crowded 
with major events and personalities, that the numerous 
volumes written upon it have ill-sufficed to do it justice. 
The ceaseless revolution of the world was then attended by 
a political and religious upheaval, the results of which still 
agitate our time. Many cherished habits of Medizevalism 
disappeared in the sixteenth century, while the phenomenal 
developments of thought and action which succeeded them, 
ushered in the Modern State and with it, scientific progress. 
Confined as we are to generalizations, it should at once be 
said that the secession of European States from Papal con- 
trol, was the last and most notable phase in the gradual 
decline of the majestic Church of the Middle Ages. Inherent 
causes would probably have brought about a disruption, 
even without leaders. The lessening empire of the Church 
continued after the .Reformation, not only in Protestant 
countries, but also in Catholic Austria, Spain, France and 
Italy. With the one exception of John Calvin, the reformers 
who rejected Rome’s spiritual jurisdiction were not unusually 
daring innovators in thought or action. We do not associate 

117 


118 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


with them the intellectual scope and depth of philosophers 
like Descartes and Spinoza, nor attribute to them the intrepid 
courage of the founders of the Dutch Republic. They re- 
mained orthordox in the Faith, and some among them 
modified their zeal for individual freedom when other Prot- 
estants whom they opposed, applied its principles for them- 
selves. 

Neither the creators nor the allies of the New Learning 
which preceded the Reformation, have always received the 
sympathetic treatment they deserved for their efforts to 
maintain an unbroken social organization. Firmly per- 
suaded as they were that nothing which had ever interested 
the human mind could wholly lose its vitality, they looked 
long, meditated deeply and acted cautiously before consent- 
ing to changes.! In the ferment of a revolutionary time when 
parties and interests were hostile to one another, and ancient 
institutions and opinions were fiercely attacked or obstinately 
defended, the quiet reasonableness and equable flow of 
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) and his disciples were sure 
to be heavily discounted. Yet among these were judicious 
and dispassionate men whose neutrality was better fitted 
than heated partisanship to rightly determine the issues of 
the age. They felt that not a few ambitious schemes for the 
removal of notorious evils contained, in their excess, the 
possibility of even worse evils. At once reactionary and 
reformative, conservative and iconoclastic, fervid haters of 
superstition and fervid lovers of the verities it polluted, the 
Renaissance scholars could not outride the storm they had 
helped to arouse. ‘Theosophists tell us that Atlantis and 
Lemuria perished, because the immense magical forces which 
their inhabitants called up escaped their control. The 
Renaissance could not be thus destroyed. It “liberated the 
human intelligence and set men free to dwell in a world of 
beauty and of humane studies.”’ The Reformation which 


Cf. Walter Pater: ‘‘ The Renaissance,’ p. 37; also, ‘‘ The Cambridge 
Modern History,” Vol. I. Chapters XVI to XIX. 


THE MODERN STATE 119 


followed it, ‘liberated the human conscience and set men 
free to act according to their own inward promptings and 
convictions.” * Each of the two processes of liberation, 
rightly viewed, assisted and supplemented the other. But 
the less fastidious Luther and the more logical Calvin outdid 
the sons of the Renaissance in the making of the modern 
State. Nevertheless, to say that the latter individuals were 
without wide influence; to deny their great value to society; 
to assert as some do that they were not inspired by laudable 
motives, is mere critical sansculottism. 

Erasmus and his fellow Humanists were worthy of their 
classic lineage as scholars and thinkers. They rendered 
permanent service to their own and after times; and may 
be even more beneficial in the eirenic days to come. With 
nearly every one of their translations and books some error 
was banished to the shades, some baseless claim muttered its 
anathema and fled. They replenished in many realms men’s 
scanty stores of truth, and evinced the merits of less biased 
minds in a whirl of reckless propaganda. We are drawn to 
them principally through Erasmus, especially during his 
visits to Holland and to England, and his residence in Basel. 
To him gathered the wits, scholars, teachers and university 
celebrities of Europe; some already famous, others candidates 
for fame.? His “Encomium Morie,” “Adagia” and ‘Col- 
loquia Familiaria,”’ had charmed every college and court 
with their amusing but telling allusions to grave subjects, 
their genial wisdom and piercing yet painless satire. Goethe 
insists that the improvement of the Church should have been 
left to men like Erasmus. Perhaps so, but how was he to get 


? 


A. E. Zimmern: ‘‘ Personality in National Progress,’”’ in ‘*‘ The Coming 
Renaissance,’’ Essays edited by Sir James Marchant, p. 225. 

3 Cf. Henry Osborn Taylor: ‘‘ Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth 
Century,’’ Vol. I. Bk. I, ‘‘ The Humanism of Italy,’”’ Bk. II, ‘‘ Erasmus and 
Luther.’’ Also ‘‘ Humanists,’”’ by Hugh Watt in ‘‘ Encyclopedia of Religion 
and Ethics,’’ Vol. VI. p. 158, ff; E. M. Hulme: ‘‘ The Renaisance and Ref- 
ormation,’’ ch. XI, ‘‘ Humanism and Heresy’; L. Elliott Binns: ‘‘ Erasmus 
the Reformer, A Study in Restatement ”’; Preserved Smith: “‘ Erasmus, a 
Study of his Life, Ideals and Place in History.”’ 


120 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


the power to which he was not born? The forces behind the 
impending revolution were too swift for his literary leisure. 
“‘While the grass grows, the steed starves.”’ His interests 
were divided; he had friends in every party; Clement VII 
made him a donation; the nuns of Cologne tempted his 
jaded appetite with sweetmeats; Archbishop Warham pre- 
sented him with the living of Aldington; and Bishop Fisher 
gave him a professorship at Cambridge. The favorite scholar 
of Europe, the brilliant but magnanimous foe of dying 
Medizvalism, he refused to take a stand like that of Sir 
Thomas More, with whom he had lodged, conversed and 
prayed at his suburban home in Chelsea. He was not built 
for a fray which meant the axe and the flame; nor could he 
any more consent to the overthrow of the Papacy than he 
could be silent about its sins. He hesitated to identify him- 
self with either faction, and admitted his hesitancy. ‘I seek 
truth,” he said, “‘and find it at times in Catholic proposi- 
tions, and at times in those of the Protestants.” 

It is not surprising that Protestants denounced him as 
a defaulter on the questions he had agitated, or that Catholics 
deplored him as a satirical rationalist whose learned jestings 
perverted faith and discipline. Nevertheless, the great fight 
for the intellectualism which saves faith from superstition, 
was fought and won before his death. Without men of his 
make up, though not of his quality, the protests of Luther 
and Calvin would have fallen short of their mark. The 
source of the humanities which he expounded was never apart 
from religion; always of its very essence. The loyal bond of 
“good letters” united him to the choicest spirits of the age. 
He was more than a consummate scholar, more than the 
friend and gossip of every select circle in Europe, more than 
the educator of a continent, more than a chastened me- 
digevalist; he was the high minded, sincere Christian who 
could not abide the beggarly traditions that had profaned 
the reasonableness of the New Testament Faith. His con- 
tribution to that Faith through his scholarship is mentioned 


THE MODERN STATE 121 


later in these pages. He aided by its means the saner 
developments of Christianity in a time of rabid contro- 
versies. 

Nor were his contributions to politics less conspicuous. 
His conception of the ideal ruler when compared with ‘‘The 
Prince” of Machiavelli, reveals the mettle of the man, and 
also the gulf between the Latin and the Teutonic Renais- 
sance. The intrigues and assassinations recommended in cold 
blood by the Florentine as statecraft, had no place in the mind 
of Erasmus. He advocated a constitutional monarchy as 
infinitely better than absolutism, declaring that kings as the 
servants of their people should make the general welfare 
their chief concern. Taxes and imposts, he urged, should be 
as light as possible, and levied on luxuries instead of neces- 
sities. No war should be undertaken without good and 
sufficient reasons which commended themselves to wise and 
patriotic citizens. We have still to wait for a fuller realiza- 
tion of the excellent principles which Erasmus advanced 
under the most difficult circumstances, and which remain to 
his praise as one of the founders of an adequate domestic and 
international science of politics. His temper and message are 
admirably expressed in the following poem: 


‘“When he protested, not too solemnly, 

That for a world’s achieving maintenance 

The crust of overdone divinity 

Lacked aliment, they called it recreance; 

And when he chose through his own glass to scan 
Sick Europe, and reduced, unyieldingly, 

The monk within the cassock to the man 

Within the monk, they called it heresy. 


And when he made so perilously bold 

As to be scattered forth in black and white, 

Good fathers looked askance at him and rolled 

Their inward eyes in anguish and affright; 

There were some of them did shake at what was told, 
And they shook best who knew that he was right.” 4 


4Edwin Arlington Robinson: ‘‘ Collected Poems,’’ p. 193. 


122 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


After Luther’s first brave stand against the Papacy, he 
economized his later reflections for practical or political ends, 
and by so doing became one of the chief personal sources of 
the complex Protestantism which includes within itself many 
various tendencies. These tendencies exist together regard- 
less of consistency. We are instinctively aware of them in 
those older factors of Church and State which prevail in 
contemporary society. It is in its struggle with those factors 
that what we call the modern world becomes conscious of its 
differences from the world of antiquity. Observe, in passing, 
a few of the differences as evidences both of the similarity and 
dissimilarity existing between those two worlds. It is a 
recognized axiom of democratic States that the civil and 
ecclesiastical powers shall exist separately. The State no 
longer entreats the spiritual sanction of the Church. Yet its 
theory that religion is the living source of civic life and duty 
is a tribute to the fact that part of the past always survives in 
the present. The supremacy of the State is no longer re- 
garded as denoting a collection of more or less unimpeachable 
qualities, but as an entity consisting of the highest possible 
conceptions of political wisdom and of the general welfare. 
Reason and justice limit that supremacy, and when they are 
violated it is jeopardized. In the absolutism of ancient 
States natural rights were unknown, and what liberty men 
had was identified with their citizenship. The Greeks could 
not conceive of a distinction between natural and civic rights; 
hence they knew nothing of private as contrasted with public 
law. The Romans separated these rights and laws in prin- 
ciple, but ignored them in practice. Man, as man, is now 
sacrosanct to a high degree; and his claim to fair treatment 
by the State makes humanity the starting point of its laws. 
These pregnant changes have ennobled human existence on 
every side. Its higher vocations flourish without any par- 
ticular concern for political or ecclesiastical imbroglios. 
Men of letters, artists, scientists, investigators, social reform- 
ers and intellectual radicals or conservatives pursue the 


THE MODERN STATE 123 


tenor of their way, as Erasmus formerly but vainly wished 
them to do, immune to the tumult of political factions. 

As I have said, the pivotal fact of the Reformation, not 
wholly novel yet quite decisive, was the disengagement of 
the modern State from the federalizing internationalism of 
the Papacy.’ This is the verity of verities behind the expan- 
sion and freedom of life which is being discussed: the one 
great gain that must be stressed in any account of the modern 
State. A more enlightened attitude toward all classes of 
society signifies its comprehensive character. Nor can they 
be rightly reckoned lesser men who, although sometimes 
lacking gentleness, moderation and sobriety, were too con- 
stant in their love for reality to consent to the peace of the 
desert; to the negative peace which spells evasion, stagnation 
and death. The sixteenth century produced such characters 
beyond the ordinary, and it was their lot to abolish the last 
form of the ancient State in dissolving the Medieval State. 
The reconstruction of the modern State was necessarily left 
unfinished by them and is still in progress. 

Within a few years after the burning by Luther of the 
““godless books of the papal decrees,”’ the provinces of North- 
ern Germany, Scandinavia, England, Scotland, the Dutch 
Netherlands and portions of Switzerland had each seceded 
from the Papal overlordship. Poland’s defection lasted for 
several years, after which she was restored to Rome by the 
enterprise of the Jesuits. The sovereignty of the Holy See 
was assailed in the hereditary provinces of the Hapsburgs; 
but the reigning dynasty and the landed aristocracy defeated 
the attack, and these provinces retained their fealty to Rome. 
Hungary’s characteristic independence kept the Genevan 
theology alive to divide the nation. In Italy and Spain the 
loyalty of their monarchs to the Papacy was assured from the 
first, and they quickly extinguished spasmodic efforts to end 
its rule. Hereafter, in Protestant States, the personnel, the 
revenues, the ritual, the administration, and even the creeds 

5 Cf. Preserved Smith: ‘‘ The Age of the Reformation,” p. 743, ff. 


124 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


of the Church were subordinated to the Civil Power, with 
which no super-State, ecclesiastical or imperial, was allowed 
to interfere. In this epoch-making transfer lies not only the 
gain of civil and religious liberty, but also the loss of Christian 
catholicity. The complete separation of European and 
American society into temporal and spiritual associations 
followed; and as a further sequence their constant bickerings 
and wars. 


ims 


The remoter causes of this transition period carry us back 
to the Wars of the Roses in England, to the repeated plagues _ 
of the Black Death in Europe, and to the decay of mon- 
asticism throughout Christendom. Yet one name must be 
mentioned at some length, since it suggests all that was at 
once most formidable and victorious in Protestantism as the 
parent of the modern State. Far exceeding the names of such 
monarchs as Charles VIII and Louis XII of France, Fer- 
dinand and Isabella of Spain, or Alexander VI, Julius II and 
Leo X in the Roman Pontificate, is the great name of John 
Calvin. Upon this solitary Frenchman of Picardy rested the 
gigantic burdens of intellectual Protestantism and of devel- 
oping nationalism. In a controversy that drove even sensible 
men to the last extremity, he had to uphold and forward the 
inspiring but more emotional onset of Luther. Throughout 
the negotiations and battlings which resulted in the genesis 
of the modern State, one perceives the courage, the strategy, 
the psychic force of the Genevan giant. Like Napoleon, he 
seemed to be, not aman, but a system. Yet he touched the 
hearts and captured the minds of the sternest, strongest race 
of colonizers and conquerors in the modern age, and shaped 
in them the one 


eee cana tyrannic thought that made 
All other thoughts its slave.” 


Nor could he have been the oracle of princes and their minis- 
ters, had not his endowments furnished a further proof of the 


THE MODERN STATE 125 


doctrine that the extraordinary individual is the solution of 
problems otherwise insoluble. 

The civilization preceding that of the sixteenth century 
was based on a belief in a Divine Revelation, for which the 
Church was both the embodiment and the organ of its 
discipline. Troeltsch observes that nothing can overcome the 
influence of such 2 a belief when it is a realand Wnquestioned 
social factor. Implicitly to accept the teaching that the 
Divine Will is everywhere present and exactly defined, and 
that it has an infallible institution as its authorized agent, 
is to sever the Gordian knot at a single stroke. This entrance 
into human life of the laws, forces and aims of Deity deter- 
mines everything. Supreme. over all is the Lex Dez, composed 
of the Lex Moysi, the Lex Christi, the-Lex Ecclesie; and- 
including within its scope and meaning the Ler Nature. At 
their source these laws are an eternal unity, and it is only 
in sinful humanity that they diverge. Under the guidance 
of the Church their equivalence is to be restored, though 
conditioned by the continuance of original sin. The faultless 
logic and careful elaboration of this dogma were among the 
last efforts of Christian antiquity. In_theory_it lifted the 
authority of the Church to superlative heights, and invested 
it with an invulnerable defense in the common obedience to 
the State.°_ Calvin’s thorough intimacy with the theory was 
equalled by his belief that it could be demolished; and he 
marshalled his energies for that sole purpose. If the initial 
opposition to the Medizval Church came from a single monk 
in one of the smaller provinces of the Empire, the campaign 
which vanquished it in the northwestern States of Europe, 
was waged by one imperial mind from the city of Geneva. 
Calvin could hardly have dreamed of the triumph which 
awaited him as a young man of twenty-four, when he read 
an apology for evangelical views which so enraged the doctors 
of the Sorbonne that he had to flee from Paris. His “Insti- 
tutes of the Christian Religion,” the first text book of Prot- 


6 Cf. Ernst Troeltsch: ‘‘ Protestantism and Progress,’ p. 9, ff. 


126 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


estant theology, was published in 1536, and translated by the 
author into French in 1541. The final edition which ap- 
peared in 1559, was five times as large as the first issue. In 
the year 1541, however, he had already relinquished the 
hope of literary leisure, and during September of the same 
year, established his home in Geneva, where he spent the 
remaining twenty-three years of his laborious life. There he 
became the personal focus of otherwise widely separated 
civil and religious interests. Frem~his.-brain_sprang the 
germinal ideas that were afterward developed in the political 
character of the leading nations of the West. His emissaries 
went from Geneva into England, Scotland, the Netherlands 
and across the border into France. The conceptual strength 
of his adamantine creed, as they taught it, was expressed _in 


es ce oe 


the Augustinian doctrine of Predestination, which supplied 
the answerof original Protestantism to the vital question: 
How can a soul be assured of its acceptance of God? It does 
not fall to me to discuss in its particular articles the theology 
of Calvin, or that of Luther and Zwingli, to all three of whom 
Augustinian Predestination, as they adopted it, was equally 
original and equally necessary. But Calvin went beyond 
the other two Reformers in making it the life blood of his 
religious thinking. He drew upon its assurance of the 
eternal salvation of the elect, for their support in his conflict 
with the Roman hierarchy and its powerful constituencies. 
Lutheranism, on the other hand, shrank from the relentless- 
ness of Calvin’s reasonings, and rebounded to those ideals of 
universal wisdom and love which pa his main 
doctrine. 

One’s sympathies are strongly engaged with the more 
humane teachings of German theology about this issue. It 
seems an inexplicable mystery of the history of Christian 
thought that the revival of Augustinianism in Calvin’s theory 
‘of Predestination, should have overthrown medieval eccle- 
slasticism. The mystery is deepened for those who pay 
little regard to the work of theology in the making of States, 


THE MODERN STATE 127 


by the fact-that_it was with the utmost reluctance the laity 
assumed an antagonistic attitude toward the old régime. 
Had not its scandals been too gross, its-oppressions-too un- — 
bearable, probably neither Luther nor even Calvin could 
have overthrown it. <A single doctrine abolished that reluc- 
tance, not in heady and impetuous men, but in the immobile 
self-contained races of the North and the West. It also 
produced pioneers, statesmen, scholars, divines, soldiers, 
who colonized the new world and transferred the scepter of 
political influence to the Thames and the Potomac. 7 

Those who agree with Professor Ellwood’s contention that 
Christianity must be ‘“‘non-theological, because theology 
remains a realm of speculation and of disputation and divides 
rather than unites men,” find scanty support for this opinion 
in the origin of the modern State.® Seldom, indeed, has 
there been a more widespread or formative response than 
that made to the doctrine of election, which unified _and 
equipped the strongest. modern nations. The mystery is 
solved in the words of Troeltsch: “The consciously elect man 
feels himself to be the destined lord of the world, who in the 
power of God and for the honor of God has it laid on him to 
grasp and shape the world. The man who is simply saved 
by grace, also, of course, receives his salvation direct from 
God, but in his dread of acting on the assumptions of pre- 
destinarianism avoids any strict delimitation and relation of 
the spheres of God and the world, and takes refuge rather in a 
purely religious sphere, out of the world.” ? No such dread 
troubled Calvin. He went far beyond the original proposals 
of Lutheranism, in which, to be frank, the Catholic formula- 


7Cf. T. M. Lindsay: ‘‘ A History of the Reformation,’”’ Vol. II. Bk. IIT, 
‘* The Reformed Churches,’’ Bk. IV, ‘‘ The Reformation in England ’’; H. O° 
Taylor: ‘‘ Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century,’ Vol. I. p’ 
384, ff; Preserved Smith: ‘“‘ The Age of the Reformation,” chapters III, V 
VI, VII; Hugh Y. Reyburn: “John Calvin, His Life, Letters and Work’’; 
“Calvin and the Reformed Church’ by A. M. Fairbairn in ‘‘The Cam- 
bridge Modern History,’”’ Vol. II. Chapter XI. 

8 Cf. Charles A. Ellwood: ‘‘ The Reconstruction of Religion,’”’ p. 11. 

9Cf. ‘ Protestantism and Progress,’”’ p. 63. 


128 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


tion of religious problems was retained, though a different 
solution was offered for them. “ By excluding all human 
effort and making salvation solely dependent upon the 
Divine Will, he rendered the Roman system negligible for 
those who believed his dogma.) Many did so believe it and 
to great effect. Faith in Predestination revolutionized Scot- 
land, broke the grip of Philip II on the Low Provinces, 
planted the New England colonies, diminished the authority 
of the English Crown, and had much to do with wresting the 
North American continent from the Spaniard and_ the 
Frenchman. It was for Calvin’s strangely inspiring creed 
that Knox opposed the faction of the Guises in Edinburgh, 
and that Cromwell’s Ironsides trampled down the Stuart 
Cavaliers at Marston Moor and Naseby. Macaulay in his 
well known “Essay on Milton” speaks thus of the English- 
men who were recreated by this theory: ‘“‘The Puritans were 
men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the 
daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. 
Not content with acknowledging in general terms an over- 
ruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the 
will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too 
vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know 
him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end 
of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious 
homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship 
of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the 
Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full 
on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face 
to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial dis- 
tinctions. The difference between the greatest and the 
meanest of mankind seemed to vanish when compared with 
the boundless interval which separated the whole race from 
him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They 
recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and, con- 
fident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments 
and all the dignities of the world. ... Thus the Puritan 


THE MODERN STATE 129 


was made up of two different men: the one all self-abasement, 
penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud, calm, in- 
flexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before 
His Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king.” 


Iil 


Calvinism, however, while democratic in theory and as 
such, the progenitor of much modern democracy, was aris- 
tocratic and-even. autocratic i in practice. Its efforts to restore 
primitive Christianity, and to transfer its authority from an 
infallible Pontificate to an infallible Bible, were largely 
formative of the State as it now exists. Here were two 
Protestantisms which must be taken into account. Lutheran- 
ism, as the source of Germany’s religious culture and in- 
fluence, should be distinguished from Calvinism, as the main 
political creator of English-speaking nations. It would 
require a very acute psychological process to trace their 
evolution for the past four hundred years, and to discern the 
reasons why Lutheranism has remained comparatively 
stationary, while Calvinism has expended its enormous 
forces in the ethics, social ideals and political organizations of 
Holland and of the English-speaking peoples. Both systems 
united at their sources, which were the personalization of 
religion and the establishment of the Holy Scriptures as the 
sole standard for matters of faith and conduct. But though 
these two concepts formed their common origin, the methods 
of their development have widely varied, and its chief con- 
trolling factor was Nationalism. In countries where political 
or patriotic stimuli were feeble, the responses to religious 
reforms were also feeble. Holland, Scotland and England 
reacted to Calvinism as nations. The reaction of Germany 
and Switzerland to Protestantism was far less complete; 
that of Italy and Spain, fitful and ineffective. In France, 


10 Cf, ‘‘ Macaulay’s Critical and Historical Essays,’ Everyman’s Library, 
Vol] Ep: 186. 


130 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


where the Crown finally incarnated the State, royalty played 
fast and loose with Catholics and Huguenots. At one time 
it seemed probable that Gallican independence and its 
traditional jealousy of papal usurpation would open the way 
for the Reformation in France. The probability was height- 
ened by Calvin’s expositions and discourses, which were so 
lucid, logical and pertinent as to constitute a classic expres- 
sion of the French mind. But the Protestant contingent 
never numbered more than a tenth of the population of 
France. She thus never conceded as a nation, the theological 
premises of one of her most illustrious sons. Yet some of the 
ereat men and many of the great women of the world have 
been produced by France, and the Huguenots can claim their 
quota of such men and women: most clever and capable, 
the stay and refuge of a State which now excites both hope 
and fear. 

Although Calvin took his theory of Predestination from 
Zwingli and Luther, both of whom denied the freedom of the 
will, and all three were indebted to St. Augustine, its his- 
toric import and results are rightly associated with Calvin’s 
works. These have none of the spiritual charm and humane- 
ness of Luther’s noble treatise, ‘‘The Liberty of a Christian 
Man,” which should be prized by all readers of genuinely 
religious literature. The love that is life; that 


“. . . gives to every power a double power 
Above their functions and their offices,” 


does not predominate in the “‘Institutes.”’ No trace of 
poetic feeling, no touch of imaginative color, no symptom of 
the recognition of human weakness, reward the patient 
reader. Man is but the chaff and dust in a colossal experi- 
ment which sacrifices every instinct of justice and mercy to 
scholastic reasonings. Yet Lord Acton pronounces the book 
the finest literary achievement of the Reformed Faith, and 
one which, by its thoroughness, definiteness and comprehen- 
sive range, transplanted that Faith to flourish in many lands 


THE MODERN STATE 131 


where Lutheranism could not obtain entrance.'! Dr. Alfred 
Plummer compares Luther and Calvin, the two religious 
progenitors of the modern State, as first-rate intellects who 
were equally confident but not equally dogmatic. The 
German saw in Rome a system which cheated man of his 
salvation; the Frenchman, a system which cheated God of 
His honor. But Calvin also perceived that the hitherto 
matchless organization of the Papacy could only be pene- 
trated by one even more compact and consistent. He knew 
no fears and entertained no doubts. As Luther had left 
Erasmus behind, so Calvin left Luther behind. He would 
not retract and he could not retreat. The Medizvalists had 
made man feel inferior; he made the elect man feel that he 
was God’s viceregent. In this real sense, exclusively papal 
privileges were transferred to the Calvinistic saints, who 
proceeded to rule their portion of the earth. Luther, on the 
other hand, often confessed his errors, and that some of his 
undertakings were not well informed, some of his measures 
improvident. It is probable that Calvin had the greater 
mind, and Luther had the greater nature. The latter during 
his lifetime exercised the larger sway; the former has exer- 
cised the larger influence upon subsequent generations. 
Both laid down rules and required statements of belief which 
necessitated the abrogation of some of their own principles. 
As knowledge grew and experience widened, other leaders 
appeared who, though less conspicuous and less able, were 
quite as sturdy, and they refused to submit to the dictates of 
the two Pontiffs of Protestantism.” 

The changes which followed were very euidenin in England, 
where Rome’s antagonists were ensconced in an island King- 
dom and Church, enjoying their ancient rights and peculiar 
privileges. From the reign of William the Conqueror, who 
brusquely refused to do fealty for his throne to the Pope, to 
that of Henry VIII, whose disgusting marital escapades have 


11 Cf, ‘‘ Lectures on Modern History,” p. 131, ff. 
12 Cf, Alfred Plummer: ‘‘ The Continental Reformation,’’ p. 164, ff. 


132 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


been indicated, there had been a rising tide of indignation 
against papal assumptions and encroachments. Doctrine, 
ritual and discipline were not so seriously disputed, since 
their revision could be left to the constitutional liberty of the 
Church. On the Continent, however, these issues were 
dominant, and the differences they kindled led to the rejec- 
tion of papal supremacy. The English Reformers began 
where the Continental Reformers ended, yet neither group 
originally intended to take the steps which had been taken 
by the other. Nor was there in England or in northern 
Europe a revival of pagan immorality with pagan learning. 
The Court of the Tudors and of the Stuarts was often lech- 
erous; but the esthetic sensuality of the Latin Renaissance 
was largely unknown to Teutonic peoples. Neither the 
arts nor the vices prospered in Holland, Germany or England 
as they did in Italy and France. The Humanists of the 
former nations preferred sacred to classic learning, and used 
the latter to translate and expound the former.“ The values 
of the individual, his right of access to his Maker, his in- 
creased power over his surroundings, were the favorite themes 
of contemporaries as different as Erasmus, Luther, Melanch- 
thon, Zwingli, Sir Thomas More and Dean Colet. National 
temperament and ethical traits wrought further changes in 
English Calvinism. It has never been feasible to wind up an 
Englishman to the level of a logically perfect dogma. As a 
congenital pragmatist long before Pragmatism, he is prone to 
avow that nothing absolute can be affirmed in the specula- 
tive realm. He applies his ideas and emotions to strictly 
practical ends; his first query about a hypothesis is not, 
“Does it hold together?”’, but, ‘‘ Will it work?”’ 

The Scot at heart is far more romantic than the English- 
man, but in the main, especially since the eighteenth cen- 
tury, both have belonged to the same civilization; and one 
which is very distinct from that of Ireland or of the Con- 


13 Cf. T. R. Glover: ‘‘ Poets and Puritans,’’ especially the essays on 
“‘ Spenser ’’ and “ Milton,” p. 1, ff. 


THE MODERN STATE 133 


tinent. The happier issue of England’s affairs at the time in 
question was largely due to the personality of Queen Eliza- 
beth, and to her astute ministers of State, her explorers and 
sea captains. She had the tigerish temper of the Tudors, 
moderated by her pride in her realm and her love for its 
people. Their tendency to insular prejudice was offset in 
her by a wide acquaintance with Continental politics. Her 
indifference toward religious reform was held in check by the 
fact that she was fighting a host of unscrupulous foes belong- 
ing to the older Church. The Catholics of Scotland, Ireland, 
Spain and France were arrayed against her. She well under- 
stood that her personal safety and that of the English nation 
depended upon Protestant integrity and Protestant good 
will. These she was at pains to conserve and cultivate, espe- 
cially in the merchants and yeomen of the Kingdom. All 
its classes, including Catholics and Protestants, united in 
her support, attributing to her person and reign some mar- 
velous but fictitious qualities. Toleration was disregarded 
when the throne was at stake. The Marian martyrs do not 
stand alone in the persecutions of the period. Many Cath- 
olics also suffered for conspiring against Elizabeth, or for 
denying the royal supremacy. Her better qualities were 
happily combined with those of the aristocratic and middle 
class families which had arisen to serve the State after the 
death of the older nobility in the Wars of the Roses. This 
unity of gifts in the Crown, the peerage and the commonalty, 
kept the nation on an even keel, and laid the corner-stone of 
Britain’s Empire in the four quarters of the globe.'* 

The destruction of the Spanish Armada released the glories 
of the Shakespearean era, which became and remained 
forever independent of political controversies. What they 
have added to English influence in the world cannot be com- 
puted. The Stuarts who inherited Elizabeth’s seat but did 
not retain her authority, could not dim the literary splendors 


14Cf, F. J. C. Hearnshaw: ‘“‘ Democracy and the British Empire,” pp. 
3-68. 


134 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


associated with her name. Inwardly dense, though out- 
wardly alert, they were unable to perceive that the decline 
of the monarchical estate had set in with them while it was 
still at its height in the France of Louis XIV. Extreme 
Puritans, who were sometimes disposed to replace the com- 
mon law with the Pentateuch, were more astute politicians, 
judged by the outcome, than any Stuart who occupied the 
British throne. 

Statesmen of large nature and efficient training, conscious 
that administration was upon their shoulders, were hard to 
find in the seventeenth century, during which the wise and 
cautious procedure of Cecil and Walsingham was lost in 
the shufflings and plottings of autocracy’s dupes or agents. 
The execution of Strafford, the one strong character who 
served the Stuart dynasty, sealed the doom of Charles the 
First who deserted him. The plain people supplied the felt 
want of national guidance in Puritan parliamentarians like 
Pym and Hampden, and in Puritan commanders like Crom- 
well and Ireton. These men, so far from being the dem- 
agogues and charlatans which ignorance or prejudice has 
depicted, were at once the masters and the servants of the 
State. They identified themselves and their measures with 
a high and austere sect, devoted to the science of politics, 
and capable of those great achievements in peace and war 
that held an unwilling world in awe. Constitutionalism, as 
the essence of that science meant to them, was to keep in 
touch with public opinion, and to be ready to sacrifice class 
interest, unlicensed power, or monopoly to the general good." 


IV 


The Pilgrims of the Mayflower were an offshoot of the 
Puritan movement which pushed Protestantism far beyond 


15 Cf. ‘‘ The Cambridge Modern History,’’ Vol. III. Chapters IX, X. 

16 Cf. Lord Rosebery: ‘‘ Miscellanies Literary and Historical.’’ Vol. I. 
p. 77, ff; Viscount Morley: ‘‘ Cromwell’’; Thomas Carlyle: ‘“‘ Oliver Crom- 
well’s Letters and Speeches.’”’ 


THE MODERN STATE 135 


the first intentions of its founders. They were not Puritans 
in the ordinary sense, for the Puritan detested separation; 
but they owed the substance of their religious beliefs to the 
Puritanism begun by Thomas Cartwright and his fellow- 
refugees at Frankfort-on-the-Main. They made a historic 
plea for separation because they held that formal conformity 
in religious beliefs was reprehensible. All were pious, dis- 
creet, industrious, grave, and rigidly governed by their sense 
of right, cost what it may. With the colonists who had pre- 
ceded them in Virginia they were content to remain sub- 
jects of that abject specimen of the divine right of kings, 
James Stuart the First of England. But it is permissible to 
suppose that they knew him sufficiently well to be far more 
at ease when the Atlantic rolled between him and them. 
Harried in the homeland, these sectarians whom Sir Francis 
Bacon, the shrewdest man of his age, excoriated as mis- 
chievous fanatics, took refuge in Holland, where they were 
hospitably received by their brethren of continental Prot- 
estantism. Their residence at Leyden and in the adjacent 
cities and towns soon convinced these Independents, how- 
ever, that they should not sever themselves from their own 
country. Englishmen they were and Englishmen they would 
remain. Bred to husbandry, the majority of them resented 
the confinement and the low wages of Dutch cities. Stran- 
gers in a friendly but foreign land, its speech unknown to 
them; settled in their religious opinions, they took little 
interest in the envenomed controversies of Calvinists and 
Arminians, which then divided the Dutch in State and 
Church. Furthermore, their English persecutors used the 
avenues of diplomacy against them and made their tenure in 
Holland uncertain. For these reasons, and also because a fine 
strain of conscientiousness ran in them, the Pilgrims, as they 
were afterwards called, undertook an adventure that turned 
some currents of the modern State into new channels.“ 


17 The term “ Pilgrim Fathers’”’ was first specifically applied to them in 
1799. 


136 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


The account of their voyage across the North Atlantic in 
the Mayflower, of their heroical endurance and faith, and 
their undesigned landing on the shores of Cape Cod in New 
England, need not be recited here. The epic courage and 
devotion to principle shown by them is not likely to lose its 
hold upon the popular mind. They accelerated in an unex- 
pected manner the racial expansion which has made Britain 
the mother of free commonwealths. Their character as a 
sect and the influence they have had upon the United States 
and all other English-speaking lands, furnish fruitful lessons 
for the statesman to moralize upon, and for the plain people 
to recall. 

American historians have been accused of bestowing in- 
discriminate eulogy upon the Pilgrims, and some writers 
assert that they have been mentioned too frequently and too 
flatteringly. Truly, in the view of their descendants, their 
excellencies seem to have had little or no admixture. But 
when the concessions due to their earthliness have been made, 
these East Anglian yeomen enable us to visualize afresh the 
strength and simplicity of that religious faith which drove 
them so far afield, in order that they might live, as they 
quaintly urged, ‘‘in a distant body by themselves.’’ Beyond 
hereditary predisposition or educational development; be- 
yond the pressure of circumstances, the unadorned tale of the 
Pilgrims manifests the resistless effect of human emotions 
when transformed by a spiritual ideal. Whatever the na- 
ture of that ideal may be, neither temporal consideration nor 
scientific argument can compare with its authority in the 
realm of actual progress. In their case it consisted in a pro- 
found belief that there is a Divine Order in the world, to 
which Church and State are alike subordinate, from which 
those institutions derive their rightful power, and in obe- 
dience to which lie welfare and perpetuity. For the sake of 
this belief they tore themselves away from their native land, 
and became as strangers and wanderers on the earth; setting 


THE MODERN STATE 137 


out after the Abrahamic manner, not knowing whither they 
went.}® 

No informed person supposes that freedom was their dis- 
covery. On the contrary, what we term freedom, which is as 
often defined as relativity and with as little satisfaction, was 
the objective of other colonists in North America besides the 
Pilgrims. The first of the groups which came to these shores 
in the seventeenth century that declared for absolute liberty 
in matters of conscience, was the Roman Catholic Colony 
planted by Lord Baltimore in what is now called Maryland. 
It numbered in its ranks pioneers of progress and inter- 
preters of man’s larger selfhood. So did the settlers from 
Holland who founded New Amsterdam, the present New 
York, and occupied the Hudson Valley. Likewise the Vir- 
ginian planters and the followers of William Penn, held 
strenuously to the main principles of social welfare and gave 
public recognition to their belief in the Divine Order for 
human society. The history of Penn’s settlement is free from 
Indian troubles and religious disputes, because of his calm and 
peaceful spirit, and the wisdom of his plans for the colony.” 

What freedom the modern State possesses is the result not 
alone of these migrations, but of those ageless processes and 
experiments to which many dissimilar individuals and 
communities have contributed. But the obedience which 
the Pilgrims and other American colonists rendered to con- 
science eventuated in a larger freedom, and this was the net 
result of their memorable enterprises. These stand out the 
more impressively because, though the Renaissance liberated 
intellectualism, it did far less for political liberty than it 
might otherwise have done. Erasmus, who was, as we have 
seen, the Humanist par excellence, was anxious to restrain 


18 Cf. Walter H. Burgess: ‘“‘ The Pastor of the Pilgrims, A Biography 
of John Robinson’’; ‘* The Pilgrim’s Motive and Contribution,’’ by Charles F. 
Thwing in ‘“‘ The Hibbert Journal,’ October 1920, p. 77, ff; Roland G. Usher: 
‘““The Pilgrims and Their History.” 

19 Cf. Isaac Sharpless: ‘* Political Leaders of Provincial Pennsylvania,”’ 
p. 20, ff. 


1388 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Luther’s attacks upon the imperial sacerdotalism which he 
himself had so sorely wounded by his mordant humor. Nor 
were the Reformers accustomed to freedom’s bracing air. 
Calvin invoked the sword of the State for the suppression of 
heresy, and even the gentle Melanchthon prayed for some 
brave assassin to murder Henry VIII. Knox had a law 
enacted by the Scotch Parliament, which inflicted the capital 
penalty upon attendants of the Roman Mass. Anglicans and 
Puritans of pious reputation spent their dying breath to fan 
the flames of religious feuds. At this melancholy juncture, 
when toleration was renounced by Protestants as well as 
Catholics, by doctors and prelates as well as princes and 
politicians, a few feeble bands of small social consequence 
discerned and unfalteringly applied the now accepted prin- 
ciple that religious liberty is the source of civil liberty, and 
that civil liberty is the requisite of religious liberty. Years 
before Cromwell asserted this broader view for the benefit 
of his Ironsides; before Milton and Taylor, or Baxter and 
Locke became notable for their arraignments of intoler- 
ance, the Pilgrims, to quote Lord Acton, ‘‘grasped with vigor 
and sincerity the principle that it is only by abridging the 
authority of States that the liberty of Churches can be 
assured.”” Thousands of Puritans, distressed and _perse- 
cuted, or attracted by the commercial opportunities of the 
colony, followed them to New England. Few bore an un- 
blemished testimony to this new freedom; some strove to 
limit its scope. But these drawbacks should not diminish 
their claim upon our regard. Critics who complain of their 
bigotry and dourness can reflect that man’s martyrdom has 
not been alleviated by the perfect moralities which the cul- 
tured few desiderate, but by those active combinations of 
good with evil that so frequently cause justice and truth to 
take an oblique direction. 

The heritage ensuing in liberty of conscience bequeathed 
to us by the Protestantism of John Robinson and his flock, 
by the Dutch Republic, by the settlers under Lord Balti- 


THE MODERN STATE 139 


more, and by the Virginians, is more vital to the modern 
State than any one prevalent religious system. To the 
Pilgrims, as to the Cromwellian Protectorate, and also to 
the advanced legislation of the Maryland Colony,”° belongs 
the distinction of having enforced a single ideal which, but 
for their initiative, might have been indefinitely deferred. 
With that ideal the well-being of freedom-loving States 
has since been closely identified. It survived the anczen 
régime which nourished decayed clericalism and feudalistic 
remnants in the national structures of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. To it Burke appealed; and he was the one English 
statesman whose lofty aspirations and splendid diction 
entitle him to rank with Milton. His innate conservatism 
did not recognize all the political doctrines which constitute 
an estimable State, but he revived and amplified, as the 
great Lord Somers had done before him, the principle con- 
firmed by the Pilgrim Exodus, by the Maryland Plantation, 
and by the Puritan Revolution. The gravity blended with 
imagination which signalized Burke’s public utterances, 
could not have been his; nor could his speeches have become 
the meat and drink of enlightened political minds on both 
sides of the Atlantic, had not the right to believe freely, to 
be open and candid without dread of tyranny, and to speak 
the thing as it is without compromise or deference, been 
advanced by the English sectarians and emigrants of the 
seventeenth century. 

Their work as well as the land from which they drew is 
of first rate consequence for us, since the State in Great 
Britain was in many ways the progenitor of our own Repub- 
lic. Mother and daughter nations were founded upon that 
faith in the Divine Order which also enthralled alike the 
Medizval Papacy and the Calvinistic Theocracy. The suc- 
cession of English sovereigns, from Alfred the Great through 
“the fierce Norman, the proud Plantagenet, the grasping 


20 The motives of this legislation have been questioned but I do not pro- 
pose to go behind the returns. 


140 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Tudor, the fickle Stuart, the independent Oliver, the Dutch 
William, and the Hanoverian Georges,’ was maintained by 
the belief that in some way they represented that Order. This 
succession is paralleled by the gradual growth of the con- 
stitutional liberty of the citizen. During the changes wrought 
by the Norman Conquest, and the still greater changes 
wrought by the Reformation, that liberty survived succes- 
sive shocks and advanced vigorously. It enrolled among its 
defenders and administrators men shrewd in debate, eloquent 
in speech, honored in their generation. Roman, Anglican 
and Puritan; Continental, Briton and American, contributed 
to its steady growth. Every true need of man, every provi- 
sion for the requirements of his better nature, was held in 
solution by this patrimony of freedom. It was the State 
rather than parties and dynasties; its honor and its interest 
rather than the high politics of princes and cabinets, which 
fired ‘the imagination and actuated the deeds of its best 
sons. The nation became the school in which they were 
trained. Its traditions were increasingly associated with 
those privileges of citizenship, which Americans of all lines 
of descent have been taught to value and uphold. Ever and 
anon, a single resolute patriot, loving truth and right alone, 
has brought the English-speaking and like-minded nations 
to his point of view, and rendered impossible the practices 
which once were universal. But rulers or statesmen like 
John the Norman, Charles I, James II, George III and the 
corrupted counsellors of the Stuart monarchy, who en- 
deavored to thwart the will of nascent or actual democracy, 
were eventually swept aside. 


Vy 


The bold attempt of George III to obtain personal rule 
is a landmark in the process. His effort to recover the 
prestige and power of the Crown, which had been reduced to 
lawful limits by the parliamentarians of the preceding cen- 


THE MODERN STATE 141 


tury, was prompted by his jealous dislike of the great Whig 
nobles. Their ancestors had dethroned James II, and brought 
in William of Orange and his wife, Queen Mary, to take her 
father’s place. The third Hanoverian king, who resented 
their political and social power, boasted his unadulterated 
Englishry. Really, he was a German prince with the paternal 
ideals peculiar to that sort of ruler. He would govern as his 
predecessor James I had said, not according to the public 
will but according to the public weal. Nor could he at any 
time be convinced that he should not exercise unlawful con- 
trol, so long as he used those parliamentary means which he 
obtained by his open corruption of a non-representative 
legislature. If dukes and lords of the Whig party distributed 
the favors of the State in the sovereign’s name, but contrary 
to his wishes, he proposed to follow his mother’s advice, and 
“be a king.”’ For twenty years he systematized bribery by 
trafficking in honors, emoluments and_ publicly-purchased 
votes. The House of Commons obeyed his will, sustained 
his choice and dismissal of ministers, and allowed him to 
originate and carry out Britain’s foreign and domestic pol- 
icles. 

Then came the American war, ended by the surrender of 
Cornwallis to General Washington at Yorktown, when the 
degraded system which had aroused the indignation and 
scorn of Pitt, Fox and Burke at last utterly broke down, and 
involved in its fall the dismemberment of a great Empire. 
Its principal author afterwards sank into madness and died 
in that condition. ‘All the world,’ says Thackeray, “‘ knows 
the story of his malady: all history presents no sadder figure 
than that of the old man, blind and deprived of reason, wan- 
dering through the rooms of his palace, addressing imaginary 
parliaments, reviewing fancied troops, holding ghostly 
courts.” 7! English-speaking peoples everywhere were now 
free to pursue another prosperous era of political develop- 
ment. The Republic of the United States had been estab- 

21 Cf. ‘‘ New Century Library,’ Vol. XI. p. 385. 


142 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


lished under the Presidency of Washington himself, of whom 
Gladstone wrote to George W. Smalley on October 4, 1884: 
“Tf among all the pedestals supplied by history, for public 
characters of extraordinary purity and nobility, I saw one 
higher than all the rest; and if I were required at a moment’s 
notice to name the fittest occupant for it, I think my choice, 
at any time during the last forty-five years, would have 
lighted, as it would now light, upon Washington.” 

The British Empire, though shorn of its greatest posses- 
sion, was compensated by Clive’s conquest of India for much 
that had been lost in the West. Incidentally, the extent of 
that country, or series of countries, makes it an Empire in 
itself: a sub-continent stretching from the snows of the 
Himalayas in the north to near the equator in the south, with 
thousands of miles of coastline east and west, and a total 
area of 1,802,657 square miles. In this magnificent territory, 
an infinitely greater India than was ever imagined by any 
of its former rulers, or by Clive himself, the principles and 
laws of Anglo-Saxon rule have received what is, perhaps, on 
the whole, their most heroical test. Consider the population 
of India in its density, multiplicity of races and religious 
beliefs. Consider, again, the social customs and _ political 
condition of its ancient peoples, whose civilization in many 
instances long preceded our own. You will agree, I think, 
that the administration of nearly 700 native States and, in 
addition, British India, which comprises 267 districts, is a 
task only comparable in all history with that of the Roman 
Empire of antiquity. Here are over 217 million Hindus, 
66 million Moslems, 10 million Buddhists, 10 million An- 
imists, 3 million Sikhs, nearly 4 million Christians, and 
scores of other sects, governed by one hundred thousand 
Britons, with one hundred and fifty thousand Anglo-Indians, 
or Eurasians, as they refuse to be called, mediating between 
the Europeans and Asiatics. Whatever may be the future of 
India, there can be no question that the mere fact of Great 
Britain’s prolonged tenure there and its consequent benefits, 


THE MODERN STATE 143 


invest her incomparable service in the political evolution of 
mankind with further and honorable usefulness. Should 
India achieve self-government in the future, and her present 
disturbances subside and be forgotten, it may then be seen 
that not only at Westminster, but almost more at Calcutta, 
the British nation gained its true renown as a modern State. 

The beginnings of its rule in India carry us back to similar 
beginnings in Canada, which was saved from the Bourbons 
by the statesmanship of Pitt and of Carleton, and by Wolfe’s 
victory at Quebec. Rodney also thwarted the aspirations of 
the French monarchy by his naval triumphs, and Eliott 
by his successful defense of Gibraltar. The first Earl of 
Chatham, after whom Americans named the city of Pitts- 
burgh, excelled as an incorruptible Minister of War, who 
pushed back the frontiers of British dominion, and bore down 
opposition to his measures by his dauntless courage and 
declamatory eloquence. His last public utterance was an 
unforgettable protest against the separation of the English- 
speaking race whose interests had been so dear to him, and 
whose future beyond the Atlantic he so vividly foresaw. 
His son, the younger Pitt, “‘the heaven-born minister of 
State,’ a pupil of Adam Smith in economics, resuscitated 
Britain’s credit, repaired her finances, encouraged her trade, 
and placed her taxation upon a more equitable basis. He 
spent the ten years of tranquility between the American and 
the French Revolutions in restoring the strength of a still 
sadly shaken Empire. When the storm broke, and the 
world order which Dr. Johnson imagined to be static in its 
perfectness, fell into the gulf riven by the revolt of France, 
Pitt’s shortcomings became palpable, and enabled Fox and 
Burke to assail his plans. He surpassed his father in peace, 
but he was inferior to him in the waging of war. Neverthe- 
less, the Pitt genius was revealed in his calm demeanor before 
repeated disappointments and reversals, and in his determina- 
tion to maintain, by force if necessary, the doctrine of Burke 
as against that of Rousseau. The military gifts of Napo- 


144 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


leon, which procured him the First Consulate, the Emperor- 
ship of France, and also made monarchs look ridiculous, 
never dismayed Pitt. It may have been unfortunate that, 
by refusing to recognize the French Republic and to treat 
with it officially, he lent color to the charge that he was 
bent on war. And it is beyond cavil that his defense of 
“the public law of Europe” made him the ally and the pay- 
master of the thieving Central Powers, which were busy in 
successive partitions of Poland. But, in the large, his 
resistance to Napoleon’s boundless sway, which Ugo Foscolo 
described as “‘like a July day in Egypt — all clear, brilliant 
and blazing; but all silent, not a voice heard, the stillness of 
the grave,’”’ has been justified by history. After Waterloo, 
when British influence was at its zenith throughout the 
world, his countrymen remembered with thankfulness that 
the great Minister who died with the triumph of Austerlitz 
weighing heavily upon his heart, had, to paraphase his own 
words, saved their nation by his energy, and Europe by his 
example.”? 

The uprising of European democracy against the privileges 
of aristocracy and feudalism followed the Napoleonic Wars. 
Its industrial revolution, precipitated by the condition of 
manufacturing centers, and by the rapid increase of the toil- 
ing classes, grew apace in England, France and America, and 
in other countries where the nation has since become the 
State, and “the people,’’ a term expressing the public will and 
the public right to act powerfully and directly in political 
affairs. In Russia, Prussia and Austria despotic predom- 
inance proved fatal to constitutional freedom. ‘The rudi- 
ments of liberalism were sternly suppressed, with the fatal 
outcome which, after minor eruptions, culminated in the 
tragedy of 1914. Into the chaos thus created we now gaze, 
wondering what will emerge therefrom. 

It is impossible to compress into the space of a single lecture 


22. Cf. Lord Rosebery: ‘‘ William Pitt’’; J. H. Rose: ‘“‘ William Pitt and 
the National Revival,” id. ‘‘ William Pitt and the Great War.” 


THE MODERN STATE 145 


an adequate portrayal of the modern State. Holland’s 
important part as a factor in its evolution has only been 
barely mentioned. There the leadership of William the 
Silent, who would have his merry quips and jests when in 
the midst of the greatest struggle for a free State which the 
modern world has seen, was successfully pitted against the 
fanatical cruelties of Alva. William’s northern stubborness, 
prescient statesmanship and deep diplomacy, were the acces- 
sories of a serene religious faith and a lofty patriotism which 
have had few superiors in any age, and were unequalled in his 
own. From him and his brave fellow-citizens all modern 
States have received a large measure of their lasting good. 

The further neglect of Holland or of other participating 
nations in the process discussed may be forgiven, when we re- 
call that the British Constitution alone is the growth of a 
thousand years, assuming ever-varying forms in obedience to 
chance and wisdom. The statesmen of 1688, who have 
scarcely been referred to here, moulded it into the form we 
now know. Since their time, the stupidity of the first 
Hanoverians gave it some advantages. Its provision for a 
Cabinet, independent of the Crown and subordinate to the 
Prime Minister, was enacted because George I. could not 
speak English. The Reform Bill of Lord Grey saved it from 
destruction in 1832. Our own Constitution was rescued from 
extreme peril by the Civil War of 1861 to 1865. The con- 
tribution of the French Revolution to the modern State was in 
many ways considerable, and European nations benefitted 
_ by its reactions. But though the theme is prolific of instruc- 
tion upon the historic side, in the last resort its issues pass into 
the realm of morals, where we must now foliow them. 


Uh a i 5 
A ay bi 
Pati Yh 
PE NRG co ae 
‘ aes Moat Sf 


fei sg 4 
4 


: Fah) 
dew 


Cea 





FIFTH LECTURE 
THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 


‘““Man’s little house of days will hold enough, 

Sometimes, to make him wish it were not his, 

But it will not hold all. Things that are dead 

Are best without it, and they own their death 

By virtue of their dying. Let them go,— 

But think you not the world is ashes yet, 

And you have all the fire. The world is here 

To-day, and it may not be gone tomorrow; 

For there are millions, and there may be more, 

To make in turn a various estimation 

Of its old ills and ashes, and the traps 

Of its apparent wrath. Many with ears 

That hear not yet, shall have ears given to them, 

And then they shall hear strangely. Many with eyes 

That are incredulous of the Mystery 

Shall yet be driven to feel, and then to read 

Where language has an end and is a veil, 

Not woven of our words. Many that hate 

Their kind are soon to know that without love 

Their faith is but the perjured name of nothing.’ 
EpWIN ARLINGTON Ropinson: The Three Taverns in 

Collected Poems, p. 470. 


FIFTH LECTURE 
THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 


The influence of education and religion upon the State — What is the 
common good? — Aristocratic, autocratic and democratic conceptions 
of the State — Ethical and political obligations should be reconciled 
if the common good of all is to be conserved and advanced — Causes 
of religious persecution — Freedom of the individual must be regulated 
by the good of many — The fallacious contentions of Hegel, Rousseau 
and other moderns — Two ideals of the State contend for acceptance: 
that of the Germanic-Teuton of world-empire with virtual slavery, and 
that of the Anglo-Saxon with actual freedom for mankind — Biblical 
teaching in regard to citizenship. 


THE individual citizen is the responsible agent of the State’s 
progress. He must foster its intellectual, ethical and religious 
resources. By him alone its collective good is maintained; 
upov him the general welfare depends. These statements are 
verified and enforced in the State’s industry, its commerce, 
its laws, its liberties, and its religion. Hence the question is 
always before us: how can human nature attain a higher 
level, and so elevate the State and its pursuits? For if the 
values of its government are mainly determined by the moral 
qualities of its citizens, surely every gift and acquirement of 
citizenship should be devoted to the cultivation of those 
qualities. No sentimentalism, however profuse; no patriot- 
ism, however fervent, can avoid this inquisition, which 
searches the souls of politicians and churchmen. Hitherto, 
many of them have believed that education is the holy fire 
which keeps the melting-pot from congealing. They attribute 
nearly all improvement in the citizen and the State to the 
steady spread of useful knowledge. Tons of tracts, pam- 
phlets and books have been written to advance this proposi- 
tion. But though education has had big innings in some 

149 


150 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


quarters, and no sensible person will underrate its gains in 
many quarters, its results are not entirely satisfactory. 
Knowledge is not wisdom, any more than some wisdom is 
necessarily goodness. ‘Today the white race, despite its 
scientific advantages over other races, gropes in semi- 
darkness. Several of its most cultured nations have been 
justly reprobated for their crimes against civilization. 
Intellectual groups are not agreed among themselves upon 
what is the best policy for education, leave alone for the 
State. Secularists at last have mooted their suspicions that 
all is not as it should be with education: that it needs not 
only a far more complete acceptance by the people, but even 
some sort of spiritual direction. Heredity is invoked, and 
perhaps, at a pinch, religion might be brought in to aid the 
difficulty. The loyalty which citizens accord to the State, 
they tell us, should be reasonable and humane as well as 
emotional. 

Few will disagree with them, but selfish ambitions and 
interests are too deeply embedded to be dislodged by rational 
or altruistic ideas. Those ambitions and interests require 
for their excision a surgery which neither systematic knowl- 
edge nor the State possesses. Nor is the State, viewed as a 
purely political organization, intended to possess it. Its 
functions are limited to external conditions, and those func- 
tions usually end where motives begin. There is no instru- 
mentality of the State which can produce ethical aims, or 
govern the conduct they dictate, except as conduct relates to 
outward behavior. The State is not indifferent to such 
motives and aims: it simply exists outside their realm.! Here 
the dilemma arises that an organization common to all, and 
in which the universal welfare is directly involved, is itself 
dependent for its beneficial control upon hidden intentions 
entirely beyond its jurisdiction. Take a specific instance. 
You hear on all sides today pleas for the conciliatory temper 
which is necessary for the coherence and unity of the nation; 

1Cf, L. T. Hobhouse: ‘‘ The Metaphysical Theory of the State,” p. 120, ff. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 151 


yet everywhere you perceive the presence of feuds and 
bigotries that divide the nation. Its separative forces are 
fostered by interests that have no legal barriers. Only 
voluntary dedication to a purer ethic; to love, justice, and 
brotherhood, can remedy the situation. But how this 
dedication is to be brought about, and to be made lasting and 
universal, is a question for which politics has no sufficient 
answer. 

We are further told that men and women must act for 
the common good. But what the common good is and what 
it is not, should first be carefully ascertained and then 
definitely stated, after which it must be generally approved. 
Some clamant groups may be for it as certainly as others are 
against it. But when its essentials are rightly understood, 
they will be found to include not only the individual’s 
temporal, but his spiritual existence; the whole being of 
the citizen. The State can help his access to those essentials 
by providing freedom for all political and religious beliefs 
which are not injurious to the body politic. It can afford 
equal opportunities in contract and trade. It can and it 
- should enlarge educational facilities, and whatever else per- 
tains to civilized communities. It can and it should take 
steps to relieve those communities of the present chaos in 
internationalism. But it is impotent to thrust these patent 
benefits, leave alone their idealized forms, upon those who 
are opposed to them. And when it has enacted laws such as 
conduce to their pursuit its duty is largely done.? 

Enlightened political rule recognizes the many varieties of 
humanity with which it has to deal, and so far as possible, 
adapts its measures to their complexity. It gives sufficient 
room for the attainment of civic honesty and righteousness 
by all classes. Its legislation is flexible enough to comprehend 
many different cases under the few approved general princi- 


2Cf. Sir Henry Jones: ‘‘ The Principles of Citizenship,”’ p. 117, ff; id.: 
‘‘Tdealism as a Practical Creed,” p. 105, ff; B. Bossanquet: ‘‘ The Philo- 
sophical Theory of the State,’ p. 295, ff. 


152 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


ples that cover those cases. But what States correspond to 
this description or rule after this manner? If you are dis- 
posed to blame them for not doing so, recall that perhaps the 
majority of minds have small power to apply to the conduct 
of life even the best laws of the State. They are prone to ac- 
cept as personally serviceable only what comes to them from 
actual experience. Even in the most advanced States 
festering evils exist, while some that have been abolished 
left scars on the nation’s memory which no after events 
have erased. These evils furnish excuses for resistance to law, 
and also reasons for lawful agitation against them. Until they 
are removed, the State must remain open to social maladies 
that weaken it. 

It is infinitely less difficult, however, to remove admitted 
evils than it is to eradicate their roots in human greed and 
selfishness. They may disappear for the moment, but they 
reappear, take more subtle shapes or more clever combina- 
tions which the endless grinding out of prohibitory laws does 
not suppress.’ Self-interest is the sworn foe of public wel- 
fare; it has countless disguises and pretexts. Legal smoke- 
screens to conceal its nefarious designs are seldom wanting. 
It thoroughly understands that while men are equal before 
the law, they are unequal in ability. It is alert to seize the 
advantage offered by this inequality, and to obey that 
instinct of the jungle by which the strong prey upon the 
defenseless. Hundreds of millions of dollars are fraudulently 
obtained annually in this country alone from the victims of 
predatory individuals or corporations. ‘Three billions of 
dollars more are lost or expended annually for the crime bill 
of the nation. But trafficking in the souls and bodies of men, 
women and children is far more deadly to the State’s exist- 
ence than all these financial depredations and expenses put to- 
gether. This trafficking is done by non-social individuals and 
groups; they practice personal and sexual perfidy; they gloat 


3 There are nearly 100,000 statutes upon the legislative codes of the United 
States. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 153 


over dishonor and cruelty; they have prescribed courses of 
action which are not so much immoral as non-moral, and 
hiding places where the State cannot always demand an 
entrance. To what lengths they proceed let the daily press 
bear testimony. Secret or extra-legal iniquities which must 
proceed to a higher tribunal than those of earth for judgment, 
probably create more havoc in nations than open and punish- 
able violations of their laws. 

The democratic State which acts consistently will, so far as 
it can, take cognizance of anything morally wrong, not to 
organize or regulate it, but to repress it. It will protect the 
defenseless and the weak, permit no hardened criminal to go 
unwhipped of justice, and preserve the peace and order of 
the Commonwealth. But it can neither purvey good con- 
sciences nor purified hearts, nor can it supply its credulous 
citizens with a fool-proof universe. A further comment upon 
the problem is that nearly all democratic States presuppose 
for their very existence a morality in their human make-up 
that may, or again, may not get beyond the realm of supposi- 
tion. 

Occasions have arisen in the development of the modern 
State when protection had to be given to injured classes. 
Here the law forsook its strictly constitutional position, re- 
gardless of the objection that it was discriminating or pater- 
nal. It has already travelled far beyond some of its original 
definitions, not because thoughtful people desire it to do so, 
but because “necessity knows no law.” If the common 
good or that of any particular group is threatened with injury 
which cannot be prevented by the State’s ordinary use of its 
powers, it is justified if it uses them in extraordinary ways. 
For example, the Land Acts of Ireland were denounced by 
some economists as confiscatory. Doubtless from the view- 
point of the original owners they were confiscatory, but they 
restored the land to the people of Ireland, and thus accom- 
plished ‘‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” 

Two conclusions may be drawn from these conditions: 


154 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


first, that the State is conditioned by morality; second, that 
its morality is that of its average citizenship. The materialis- 
tic theories of the State which reject these conclusions are 
often clothed in high-sounding words of worldly wisdom, but 
they are deceptive. To concentrate upon the purely legal, 
economic or physical factors of the nation; upon its laws and 
their administration; upon its crops, tariffs, or trade regula- 
tions, should not exhaust the possibilities or the obligations 
of a forward-looking State. Although what it cannot do is 
quite as extensive and more important than what it can do, 
the intensive developments of society demand of it those 
ethical developments that safeguard society. Yet these, as 
we have seen, in the last resort, are no more and no less than 
the collective ethic of its citizenship. We must not tolerate 
the delusion, however, that man lives by bread alone; that 
his physical appetites or pleasures, his monetary gains or 
losses absorb his attention and fix his politics. By that delu- 
sion heartless competition without restraint makes a mockery 
of our boasted freedom; it even uses the historic language of 
that freedom to apologize for its misdeeds. 

Biology, from which the student of the past gets occasional 
side-lights, corroborates the assertion of moralized politics 
that the struggle for existence not only cultivates self-interest 
in the individual, but also mutual sympathy and helpfulness 
in society. It isa blunder to identify that struggle with every 
repulsive aspect of selfish and sordid conduct. The purely 
self-seeking animal is a fiction; the self-sacrificing animal is no 
less primordial than its opposite type. From life’s dawn 
altruism has been as conspicuous as egoism, and has saved 
Nature from being the blood-stained cockpit which some 
scientists once insisted it was. Life will be served, whatever 
may oppose, and its service is never for the dead, but al- 
ways for the living. Its organisms havea priority which 
reacts against every menace and usually overcomes it. 
“They thrust and parry, passively experiment, or actively 
evade for one end: the conscious or unconscious attainment 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 155 


of better being.” * What are these biological facts but the 
reflections in Nature of the eternal laws of truth and justice, 
which have origins familiar to believing men and women. If 
those laws make peremptory demands upon the lower phases 
of existence, how much the more do they exact from hu- 
manity as the apex of its pyramid? Neither the individual, 
the family, the community, nor the State can dethrone their 
supremacy. They are above earthly authority, and the na- 
tion which attempts to repudiate them strikes at the heart of 
its own life and freedom. Remote and recent events point 
the moral of an insolent egoism in the State no less than in 
the individual. When it undermines idealism, disavows 
social and religious responsibilities, yields to the idea that a 
nation must either devour other nations or be devoured by 
them, such a State digs its own grave. Bloated by spurious 
notions of its grandeur or invincibility, it falls beneath the 
condemnation of world society, or becomes the prey of in- 
ternal dissensions and foreign hostility. History shows by a 
long list of examples that political sovereignty of any sort 
must respect its limitations or perish. It may not be able to 
coerce morality in the citizen, but it has a moral coercion 
laid upon it by ‘“‘the Power not ourselves, which makes for 
righteousness;’”’ and that coercion is absolute and final. 


Il 


Democratic nations accept popular government, not 
solely to gratify the individual’s desire for a share in govern- 
ment, but because they believe it contains the authoritative 
source of political power. This belief has produced a two- 
fold obligation: first, that of an ethical kind devolving upon 
the individual; second, that of a political kind devolving upon 
individuals and society. A person is free, not only when he 
asserts his rights, but also when he obeys the demands made 


4Cf. Ernest E. Unwin: ‘ Religion and Biology,” p. 66, ff; J. Arthur 
Thompson: “The System of Animate Nature,’”’ Vol. I. p. 293, ff. 


156 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


upon him by the State. His good is involved in the good of 
his fellow citizens, and what is good for him alone cannot be 
advanced by endangering the common welfare. If the chief 
purpose of the State is to secure the largest benefits for the 
majority, the freedom of the individual must necessarily be 
regulated by that purpose. Yet he is not therefore to be 
treated as its mere creature. Far otherwise; for the most 
serviceable traits of his character are to be scrupulously con- 
served. The State which is actuated by these principles is 
warranted in carrying out the policies that advance them, in 
doing which the faith and morals of the citizen must always 
be matters of solicitude. Its attitude toward them is both 
negative and positive. The State can prohibit or compel as 
the exigencies of a given situation may determine. The 
exercise of force is its lawful prerogative, not only for the 
removal of obstructions to the welfare of the people, but also 
for the preservation of their rights. In this connection there 
is a place for punishment which is neither retaliatory nor 
retributive, but remedial.° 

Bentham’s contention that right is an artificial creation of 
the State, overlooks the truth that the State seldom, if ever, 
successfully introduces for the guidance of the community 
what does not already exist in the minds of its members. 
His further contention that law is intrinsically evil is oblivious 
to the fact that the law is largely negative. It is not made for 
the righteous man but for the lawless and unruly.® Its opera- 
tion is conditioned by the abnormalities of society, and where 
society is normal, its jurisdiction is correspondingly limited. 
Equally fallacious was the plea of his distinguished disciple, 
John Stuart Mill, that we should assign to individuality that 
part of life in which the individual is chiefly concerned; to 
society, the part which interests society. Such an assignment 

5 The question of capital punishment is one to be discussed separately, 
with reference to the particular offender and to the society whose stability 
is impaired by his deed. Cf. Norman L. Robinson: ‘“ Christian Justice,”’ 


ch. VII. “ Justice and Punishment,” p. 158, ff. 
6] Timothy I. 9, 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 157 


would be arbitrary and prove impracticable. Dividing 
human life into compartments of this kind is an oft-tried and 
useless experiment. It relieves it of nothing which is need- 
lessly burdensome, and it opens the door for imaginary rights 
inspired by self-will, caprice or folly. The system of rights 
maintained by the State is to be appraised from the point of 
view of the whole community. Such rights, which also imply 
duties to be enforced by law if they are neglected or violated, 
derive their merit from the aid they render to a larger and 
better social life. Since they are subordinate to this purpose, 
their exercise is only admissible as it fulfills the purpose. 
No individual can assert a right actuated by his desire to do 
as he pleases. Before his will can be done it must have the 
consent of his fellows. The recognition by society of personal 
rights, even though these belong exclusively to the individual 
asserting them, depends upon the expression the rights 
make in service to society. The laissez fazre principle is 
impossible except as a theoretical speculation. It may be 
true that perfect liberty is an equivalent to a total absence of 
government, but the truth is wholly relative to an idealized 
self-knowledge and self-control which make perfect obedience 
to a perfect law equal to perfect liberty. The State which 
combines these heavenly attainments has not yet appeared 
on earth.’ 

The juristic meaning of liberty is an absence of restraint. 
But in its application to the exercise of the rights of citizen- 
ship there is a negative aspect, which has to do with the 
presence of restraint so far as the rights of others are con- 
cerned, and a positive aspect which refers to the freedom of 
the individual more fully to become himself. Such, then, is 
the paradox of the State. And the problem it suggests is 
how to reconcile ethical with political obligations. Plato, 
fully aware as he was of the difficulty, set forth the function 


7Cf. ‘‘The Idea of Public Right,’’ prize essays in the competition of 
‘““The Nation,’’ London, with an introduction by the Right Hon, H. H. As- 
quith. 


158 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


of the State as an educational institution, to instruct citizens 
in one thing alone — the nature of the good. But could the 
lesson be given and learned, its values are lost so long as 
there is no united dedication of the citizenship to the practice 
of good. Nevertheless, the theory of Plato is as a lamp 
shining upon our darkness out of bygone days. He could 
not abolish the rivalries which obscured its wider illumina- 
tion, but he grasped the essential truth of the upper side of 
the State’s existence. Since .he elucidated fundamental 
politics, many further possibilities of human good and ill 
have been discovered, in which, as I have said before, man’s 
potentialities for right doing make a sad contrast with the 
low average of his actual moral attainments. He must be 
regarded as an incomplete being ever requiring, and to some 
degree making, a better environment. The social Elysiums 
of which some reformers dream indicate his infinitude of 
range, but they are not yet within his reach.® 

Discipline is a necessity at the present stage of human 
existence, and in view of its exigencies the State is justified 
in the use of compulsion. Circumstances are conceivable 
when the common good could only be maintained by the 
coercion of malignants who themselves may be morally 
upraised in being made to obey. Nor are the educational 
results of a fearless enforcement of law to be despised. 
Though parliaments, congresses, courts, or even armies and 
navies are not primarily agents of instruction, but organs of 
the State, they have repeatedly taught that submission to 
civic rule is essential to its political integrity. Its right to 
exercise force upon recalcitrants is a prerogative in which 
no other human society shares. The knowledge that it 
has the right, and the reserve force to meet emergencies 
that may arise, is an indispensable bulwark of public safety. 
The ultimate arbiter and regulator of political and social 


8 Cf. Joyce O. Hertzler: ‘‘ The History of Utopian Thought.” <A dis- 
cerning survey of idealistic conceptions from the Hebrew prophets to Wells, 
with criticisms of their limited perspectives. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 159 


routine, to which the mechanism of the nation is attached, is 
the State, as the bearer of the swords of common justice and 
of common protection.’ 

The objection is raised that this conception of the State is 
altogether too militant, and favors the methods of armed 
violence which we have previously denounced. ‘The enforce- 
ment of outward conduct by means of penalties, either 
threatened or inflicted, it is said, seriously interferes with the 
freedom of the citizen and with the spontaneous action of 
social interests. It is further objected that such interference 
checks the growth of the citizen’s capacity to exercise his 
individual rights. As heretofore, the State must be viewed 
upon its positive as well as its negative side. Its single aim 
in penalizing offenders against social well-being is to insure the 
moral advancement of its citizens. It bids them do or not do, 
and assumes surveillance of their external life, in order that 
well-doing may be promoted and ill-doing prevented. Nor 
are their motives entirely left out of count. The moral 
sanction of the private and the public mind is always an 
accessory within the purview of the State, guiding its policies 
and adding to its authority. Sir Henry Jones truly observes 
that its educational work means nothing else than the en- 
largement and right disposition of man’s intellectual and 
ethical faculties. He must be governed for his own sake, and 
not for an ulterior purpose. In this sense, a free State is the 
school in which nations learn the lessons of lawful sovereignty; 
and the curriculum should be arranged so as to instruct all 
alike. Better still, the State may perhaps be compared to a 
family which exists for the sake of its members. The school 
and the family have their strength in their morale, to which 
their united will and intelligence minister. Likewise the 
State should impart to the persons and groups composing it, 
the universalized knowledge which binds them into oneness, 
measurably corrects an errant psychology, controls way- 


9Cf. Norman L. Robinson: ‘“‘ Christian Justice,’ Chapter VIII. “ Jus- 
tice and the State,” p. 187, ff. 


160 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


ward impulses, and instills nobler conduct. ‘To lessen tempta- 
tion, to widen opportunities for right living, to make loyalty 
to its own laws and institutions a welcome engagement: 
these are the duties of the State.! 

The successful husbandman plants his crops when and 
where they will grow, selecting for them so far as is possible 
salubrious air and nourishing soil. He carefully considers 
their peculiarities, and adapts his methods of cultivation to 
them. He does not unduly meddle with Nature, but con- 
spires with her to elicit the fruits of the earth as the reward 
of his toil. The successful State pursues a similar course for 
a similar end. Its rights are its duties, and its will is never 
more impressive than when it abstains from despotic measures 
and maintains, as best it can, beneficent purposes. Legal 
right often invokes opposition, and it has a troubled and 
vexatious record. But imperative right is in harmony with 
those moral convictions which are the cement of human 
associations, and testify to the ethical nature of the State. 
Reason sustains it, as it sustains all other rights which 
satisfy permanent human needs. Therefore such rights 
should have nothing to dread from any ordinary even- 
tualities, since the consensus of human judgment is upon 
their side. When the founders of the North American 
Republic declared that all men are entitled to the enjoyment 
of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they spoke not 
alone for themselves, but for the human race. The limits of 
private conduct are determined by the ends they enumerate. 
Crime has no claim upon the State except to be exterminated; 
wrong opinion has no rights except to be corrected; a de- 
praved conscience can assert nothing so much as its pitiful 
need of direction. At the same time the processes of exter- 
mination, correction and direction are always more effective 
when they are patient, sympathetic and educational. 

The main cause of religious persecution, according to 


10 Cf. John A. Ryan and M. F. X. Millar: ‘‘ The State and the Church,” 
p. 195, ff. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 161 


John Stuart Mill, was “a resolve not to tolerate others in 
doing what is permitted by their religion because it is not 
permitted by the persecutor’s religion.” This resolve is not 
confined to religious persecutors; it is frequently held by 
social and political partisans.14 The prosecution of radical 
or seditious views and actions in behalf of the nation, has 
sometimes been degraded by a furiousness that defeated its 
own ends. The great boons which the French Revolution 
conferred upon Europe were seriously impaired by the 
members of “‘The Committee of Public Safety.’ The 
political character of this Committee appeared the more 
tyrannical because of the freedom which it professed. These 
men are said to have been the children of circumstance, 
which may be described as the environment of the hour. 
But their real weakness was revealed in the ferocity which 
aggravated circumstance instead of wrestling with it. Those 
lords and ladies who exchanged Versailles and Trianon for 
the disastrous fortunes of the Temple and the guillotine, 
became heroes and heroines. Those who butchered them 
indiscriminately were hated as enemies of God and mankind. 
Incapable of pity as of justice, Marat, Barrere, Robespierre 
and their fellow Terrorists have received small consideration 
for their public courage, or for their resistance to feudalism. 
They died or survived with much murder on their souls. The 
Russian Revolution rests under the same incubus, which 
some of its defenders assert is an inevitable accompaniment 
of transitions from despotism to liberty. It would be nearer 
the mark to assert that it is the offspring of the most dam- 
nable of all despotisms; of the thing called the mob; the thing 
of moods, now mad with destruction, now brutally brave, 
now timid as a hare; a multitudinous appeal to fear; savage, 
violent, ominous; a hungry beast, which has often showed 
its fangs in the modern State, and also in our own country.” 


11Cf. George M. Stratton: ‘‘ Anger: Its Religious and Moral Signifi- 
cance,’’ Chap. X. ‘‘ Persecution and War in Religion,” p. 161, ff. 
12 Cf, 8. Weir Mitchell: ‘‘ The Adventures of Francois,” p. 170, ff. 


162 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


The rack, the pillory, and the stake have propagated more 
opinions, heretical or orthodox, than they could ever exter- 
minate. Miscarriages of justice reverse moral values, en- 
throning wrong at the cost of right, and repudiating the 
tolerance which tempers justice with mercy. Yet this 
tolerance is a delicate art, and can only be practiced by 
strong and efficient States. They may also push it too far. 
For what appears to be tolerance in the Executive is too 
often indifference. If there were a universal toleration of 
everything and everybody, chaos would follow as surely as it 
has followed intolerance. 

In these and all other relations between the individual and 
the State, there is a constant interaction of wise and elevated 
sentiments which constitute the permanent well-being of 
both. Christian ministers, who have to subserve those senti- 
ments, find their sources in divine truth. Nor need they fear 
for it, or for any of its derivative realities so long as freedom 
is the common good. In this connection the noble words of 
Milton’s ‘‘Areopagitica”’ are pertinent: ‘‘Though all the 
winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so 
Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and pro- 
hibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood 
grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and 
open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest sup- 
pressing. ... For who knows not that Truth is strong, 
next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor strategems, 
nor licensings to make her victorious; these are the shifts 
and the defences that error uses against her power. Give 
her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps.” 


Tit 


The dogmatic and fault-finding spirit which disguises itself 
as altruism, is not always a trustworthy guide. The citizen 
who pits his conscience against the corporate conscience may 
be right in so doing, but he has need to be sure of his ground. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 163 


Not every fulminator in the pulpit is another Chrysostom, 
nor every dweller in the Cave of Adullam another Aristides. 
Self-assertive, loudly advertised aversions to the average 
mind, or the empty peculiarities which covet publicity, 
must not be mistaken for that genuine patriotism which 
reveres precedents, and even laws, in its opposition to rulers 
who have violated both. If individuals who resent the con- 
trol of the State would reflect that it supplies its citizenship 
with numberless opportunities for life and being, and the 
many needs which these entail, their impatience with its 
sovereignty might be abated. Evidently it is warranted in 
protecting communal existence from whatever hurts it; and 
when false statements are silenced for the benefit of the 
community, free speech is not hurt; it is only rescued from 
the hazards of personal eccentricity. No honorable citizen 
can be indifferent to his country’s well-being, nor remain 
neutral in the time of its danger. He may plead exemption 
from its ordinary duties, or even from some of its lesser neces- 
sities, but riots, insurrections, wars, and the vicious policies 
which cause these outbreaks, demand that he act in con- 
cert with his fellow-citizens for the restoration of public 
order and safety. Social customs injurious to the State, 
even though authorized by its legislation, are not to be 
countenanced by him. He should strive for the repeal of 
such legislation, and protest against the customs which it 
sanctions. 

In this connection, there are forty-eight different codes 
in the United States which attempt to regulate marriage and 
divorce. A person may be lawfully married in one State and 
become a bigamist when he enters another. Wives and hus- 
bands are still held in the marital compact in a given common- 
wealth, but are neither husbands nor wives, widowers nor 
widows, when they cross its frontier. Property rights and the 
legitimacy of children are wiped out by geographical acci- 
dents. The legality of divorce decrees, involving as they do 
domicile, jurisdiction, and other various causes which the 


164 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


different States assign for divorce, is confusion worse con- 
founded. Marriages dissolved in one State are declared legal 
in another. In these and similar ways the reputation of 
honest men and women is often damaged, and that of social 
offenders is as frequently legally sustained. Judge W. H. 
Thomas, formerly an Associate Justice of the Court of Ap- 
peals of the State of California, is responsible for the state- 
ment that divorces are more numerous in America in propor- 
tion to its population, than in any other country which 
tabulates marriage statistics.” The annual total of such 
decrees for the forty-eight States is in the neighborhood of 
100,000, and is increasing three times as fast as the popula- 
tion. With one divorce for every seven marriages here, 
Japan is our only competitor, and her later record has fallen 
below ours. In 1870 we had 28 divorces for every 100,000 
of the population; in 1922 the figures increased to 134 for 
every 100,000. ‘‘Much of this trouble,” says Judge Thomas, 
‘““is chargeable to the chaotic condition of our marriage laws; ”’ 
and he recommends ‘‘a uniform law, applicable to all Amer- 
ican territory, and based upon wisdom and experience.”” The 
domestic tragedies perpetrated by this anomalous condition 
must be left to the imagination. Its prostitution of right 
living and decency breeds the shameful results that clutter 
the court records of the United States. The ery of its in- 
nocent sufferers sounds like the trumpet of God, calling every 
citizen to their relief. Such notorious iniquities, though 
fostered by unequal laws or by social usages, are not to be 
endured, still less condoned, but fought to a standstill.¥ 
The same sense of obligation applies to the problem of 
possessions. Wealth, in whatever degree, is vitally related 
to the well-being of the community and the nation; and the 
attitude of the citizen toward it must be determined by what 
he feels he owes, and not by what he actually owns. The 


13 Cf. Lord Shaw: ‘‘ The Law of the Kinsmen,” address on ‘‘ The Widen- 
ing Range of Law,” in which he asks whether the method of settlement and 
the solution of this and kindred problems is to lie ‘‘ with the brutality of 
force, or with the ministry of substantial reason,” pp. 97, 119. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 165 


protection specifically extended to property rights by the 
Constitution of this Republic evidences the wisdom of its 
founders. Their regard for property is justified by those 
ethical principles which should obtain in all constitutional 
law. The family is the unit of the State, and both exist by 
the accumulation of property. The right to gain a livelihood, 
and to acquire means for the education of children and the 
defense of age, has commended itself to all civilized States. 
English-speaking peoples, who are not prone to think or act 
nationally except upon the larger issues, long since realized 
the justice of that right, and have governed themselves ac- 
cordingly. Upon nothing save the sanctity of human life, 
are they so completely agreed as upon the matter of prop- 
erty. Political or social propagandas which threaten its 
institutional character are predestined to failure in a real 
democracy. It should be added that those who direct 
organized politics are sometimes complaisant to fatuity when 
the claims of property are at stake. But notwithstanding 
their defense of some of its wrong uses, its conservation still 
stands. Relating, as it does, to men’s dealings with all the 
physical instrumentalities of life, property is a necessity of 
human existence which has to be safeguarded. Provision 
for daily needs and future contingencies is incumbent upon 
the citizen. The physical and moral welfare of dependents 
stimulates his desire to work and to improve his property. 
The improvement is not made for self alone, but chiefly for 
the sake of others. Those who have not experienced the 
anxiety which uncertainty about the future inflicts upon the 
majority of toiling men and women, cannot realize the dis- 
tress and indignation that such a condition provokes. It is 
one of the chronic sources of discontent in the labor circles 
whose numerical increase has kept pace with the growth of 
industrialism, and whose reactions should be carefully ob- 
served by all citizens. The removal of this irritant is advis- 
able, for when the honest worker is insured against the evils 
of an unsheltered age, he will renew his task with hope and 


166 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


confidence. Some measures for this insurance have hitherto 
vacillated between stubborn opposition and panic-stricken 
surrender. Well considered legislation for the removal of the 
difficulty, and of those arising from loss of employment, or 
from prolonged sickness, would conduce to the safety of the 
State and of the rights of property. Such legislation is still 
in abeyance, or where enacted has often had a tendency to 
pauperization.* 

In a true democracy there is no need to seek the material 
prosperity of the many by the ruin of the comparatively few 
who are rich. Artificial barriers to a more general prosperity 
are always being levelled in free and lawful States, where 
scrutiny of the sources of wealth is more likely to issue in 
constructive emulation than in destructive hostility. English- 
speaking peoples, as I said in the first lecture, are quite aware 
of the defects inherent in the capitalistic system, and the 
best citizens are intent on their abolition. But the fact that 
it is the only practicable system which has been devised for 
governing economic relations, weighs with thoughtful men 
and women, and forbids rash experiments. In less fortunate 
nations the non-producing and leisured classes have thriven 
in surroundings of ignorance, social subjection and political 
docility. But in the United States, the British Common- 
wealths, and other nations of a similar character, the hope of 
salvaging civilization, and with it the general economic 
structure, is founded upon a freedom which should not be 
denied to either rich or poor. 

That freedom maintains the right of every worker, whether 
by hand or brain, to choose his work and his wage, and also 
the right of the employer to superintend the use of his in- 
vested capital. But in passing from theory to practice, the 
public welfare has required some advanced economic meas- 
ures which, until recently, the State was loth to adopt because 


14 Cf. ‘Property, Its Duties and Rights: Historically, Philosophically 
and Religiously Regarded.’ Essays by various writers, edited by Vernon 
Bartlet. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 167 


its dread of paternalism carried it too far in the opposite 
direction. The industrial, social and moral attributes in- 
separable from an adequate economic system, have been 
delayed by the obstinate greed of capital and of organized 
labor, and by the indifference or cowardice of the public 
at large. To supplant denunciation with instruction, and the 
spirit of envy with that of good will; to show that mutual 
codperation and not unlicensed competition is the life blood 
of free exchanges, are the duties of the State as well as of its 
individual members. It must place the privileges and the 
obligations of its corporate body before the public mind, and 
insist that every individual, every rank and condition of 
citizenship, shall share the solemn responsibilities which rest 
upon the entire nation. 


IV 


The general will of the State, which should deepen this 
sense of responsibility, is simply the consistent manifestation 
of countless individual wills. As a volitional unit it is ob- 
tained by extracting from each person’s convictions those 
which concern the general interest. By combining, equalizing 
and balancing them, a single result is gained which is loosely 
defined as the will of the people. In so far as its verdicts are 
free and unified, as a rule they are reasonable. But when 
they are suborned, or compelled, or made mutually exclusive 
by group divisions, they are wont to be ineffective or in- 
jurious. Here opposite groups of facts have to be recon- 
ciled, since the letter of the law and liberty of conscience are 
occasionally found at variance with each other. Hegel 
contended that there was another group of facts in which the 
extremes of the opposite groups were synthesized. This 
group he defined as constituting ‘‘the ethical system,” or 
“the moral life,’ or “social ethics.’ The ‘ethical system”’ 
affirms freedom in respect of the family, of the well-to-do and 
of the political organism of the State. In the words of Wal- 


168 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


lace, the modern State, according to Hegel, is “‘not something 
assuredly which lives in London, and has its holy of holies in 
the office of the Treasury; not something which lives for the 
time being in the Cabinet, and in the upper and influential 
circle of the bureaucracy.” On the contrary, it is the con- 
crete and indivisible unity of all the elements of human 
society that compose it. Whatever may be the contradic- 
tions and antagonisms within the State, it remains a per- 
manent entity. | 

Monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, as Hegel viewed 
them, were distinctions applicable only to undeveloped 
communities. The State’s existence did not depend on them. 
It was complete in itself, and as such, the sole supreme and 
self-contained social form in which men and women found 
their ideal activities. The family was its natural basis, and 
the fountain of its intelligent, moral and artistic life. The 
interdependence of social effort, commerce, economic de- 
mand and supply, was compared to an ever-widening stream. 
So long as the more purely political organization, call it by 
what name one pleases, blended all these natural affinities and 
divergent interests into a single comprehensive nationality, 
its members could play their own parts well, and contribute 
their quota to the total of humanity. Hegel’s theory of the 
State as the supreme end of human action, and therefore an 
end in itself, was really a segment of his pantheistic view of 
the universe. It has not found wide acceptance except by 
autocratic governments, and few political philosophers have 
adopted it. His conception of the State as a concrete part 
of the “Absolute” in which all opposites are reconciled does 
not correspond with the truths forced upon men by actual 
experience. This “Absolute,” has neither organism nor 
purpose. Its asserted perfection is undefined and indefinable. 
It is neither personal nor impersonal, and therefore possesses 
no qualities for good or for evil. As a metaphysical hypoth- 


15 Cf. W. Wallace: ‘‘ Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and 
Ethics,’’ p. 120, ff. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 169 


esis, skilfully conceived and expounded, but without moral 
character or consistency, it furnishes a striking proof of the 
mischief wrought by able but errant speculation. Any 
theory which attempts to destroy personality in God or in 
men, as Hegel’s theory does, obstructs the spiritual com- 
munications that give their higher meaning alike to the 
individual and to the institutions of the State. Apart from 
its detrimental effects upon religion, one should mark its 
pernicious influence in modern politics, and its close connec- 
tion with the World War. 

Further, Hegel’s proposition that the real will is thé general 
will expressed in the social fabric of the State, and that the 
citizen has no will worthwhile separate from that fabric, 
ignores the freedom of the individual and confiscates him, 
body and soul, to the State. The essential difference between 
the State and society at large is lost in the process of con- 
fiscation. Much organized human life is outside the jurisdic- 
tion of the State; its social alignments traverse State divi- 
sions; and when properly made and kept are helpful to the 
State’s integrity.’ Extreme forms of individualism tend to 
deny the reality of these social alignments. Or again, the 
reaction against those forms tends to the view that society is 
an entity apart from individuals, and that they are merged 
in it without regard to their personal identity. The truth 
is that in society and in the State, the individual is both 
conditioned and unconditioned, ruled and ruler. The lawful 
intercourse of society, of the State, and of the citizen so 
interpenetrate, that genuine freedom is not curtailed but 
amplified. 

Thomas Hill Green, one of the best thinkers in the British 
School of philosophic idealism, did valiant service for the 
ethical interests of our political heritage, by showing that the 
claims of the individual upon society and of society upon the 
individual are reciprocal. Certain powers are secured to 


16 Cf, I. T. Hobhouse: ‘‘ The Metaphysical Theory of the State,”’ p. 76, ff; 
also, Albert Schweitzer: ‘‘ Civilization and Ethics,’’ Chapter XITI. 


170 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


every man by society, which must exercise authority to 
guarantee those powers. Both sets of claims rest upon the 
truth that those powers, in the man and in society, are 
absolutely necessary for the fulfilment of man’s vocation as a 
moral being. Without them the self-devotion which leads 
toward better character in self and in others could not exist. 
The State does not absorb or suppress individuals. It is a 
body of persons, recognized by each other as having rights 
and possessing certain institutions for the purpose of the 
maintenance of those rights. Thus, while the State is more 
important than any citizen, it cannot be indifferent to the 
rights of any single citizen.” 

In theory, as we have said, the common good is the aim of 
the State. But in reality, other motives and aims intrude, 
projected by illicit interests and desires. Contralized govern- 
ment resulting in mass tyranny, the ineptitude or unintelli- 
gence of peoples, or leadership itself misled by dogmatic 
prepossessions, have frequently buried the common good, 
and automatically guarded it from the inquiries of ordinary 
-men. Nevertheless, a reasonable view of the situation up- 
holds the belief that the maintenance of the State is by the 
power of good-will, not force; certainly never falsity nor 
treacherous diplomacy. Not acommon greed but a common 
benevolence is the rock upon which political institutions must 
be built. Nor can this principle be overthrown by the facts 
derived from self-interest or from reckless national aggran- 
dizement. When laws or their administrators violate liberty 
of conscience, history shows that, provided liberty of con- 
science is energized by the right, it triumphs, and enforces a 
change of antagonistic statutes and rulers.® 

Sociology is a useful accessory in the determination of the 
citizen’s relations to the State. It has systematized the 
interests of community life, and demonstrated that econom- 


1 Cf. Thomas Hill Green: ‘‘Principles of Political Obligation,” pp. 347, 
443. This volume and his ‘‘Prolegomena to Ethics” are of the utmost 
value to every student of ethical valuations. 

18 Cf. B. Bosanquet: ‘‘The Philosophical Theory of the State,’’ p. 295. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 171 


ics and politics must be treated as collateral questions. Its 
surveys of ancient and modern peoples and States, though 
not of equal significance, have their special values. Modes 
of government, the different social methods and their respec- 
tive advantages or disadvantages, are placed in a new and 
clearer light.!* By its means we perceive that many political 
thinkers were hampered by the prevalent ideas of their age, 
and we also see how few were able to change those ideas. The 
science also includes the physiological branch, which has to 
do with the identities and differences of individuals, groups 
and races.” Social philosophy, to which Comte made an 
original contribution, simplifies these identities and differ- 
ences, and teaches us to avoid erroneous distinctions between 
the State and the people. The idea that the sovereignty of 
the one necessarily implies the subservience of the other is 
abandoned. Those, who, imitating Rousseau, would prac- 
tically annihilate the existence of the State, and those, who, 
imitating Hegel, would make the State the grand finality, 
are viewed as alike mistaken. 

Viscount Morley is right when he says that Rousseau was 
the most directly revolutionary of all speculative precursors 
in this field; the first to apply his mind to those social condi- 
tions which must be modified. Yet the opening sentence of 
the “‘Contrat Social,’”? which has been repeated around the 
world, ‘‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains,” 
is utterly misleading in its bald literalism. Man is born for 
freedom, and this is attainable not by animal isolation in a 
fictitious state of nature, but by his subjection to social 
requirements, and to the law of the land. These are sup- 
posed to operate in harmony with the general will which 
aims at a community of interest. This general will, and not 
spasmodic majority or minority votes, is the substantial 

19Cf. W. W. Willoughby: ‘‘ The Nature of the State,” p. 1, ff. 

20 Cf. W. McDougall: ‘‘ Social Psychology,” pp. 84, 170, 296 ff; id. 
‘* The Group Mind,” Part I. *‘ General Principles of Collective Psychology,’’ 


p. 31 ff; Franklin H. Giddings: ‘‘ Studies in the Theory of Human Society,”’ 
p. 154 ff. 


172 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


factor. The franchise may either hasten or retard its ad- 
vantages. It can also help to relate particular wills, which 
while unrelated, have no controlling power. But it cannot 
exclude that community of interest which is the binding 
force of politics. 

Those who assert personal rights over social rights should 
remember that the former are themselves, as often as not, 
imperilled unless subordinated to the latter. Government 
by one’s own law is anarchy,.but government according 
to equal law is approximate liberty. Locke held that the 
State is created to protect the rights which belong to the 
individual by nature, but he did not clearly distinguish 
between rights and obligations. Where much is given, much 
is required — a rule that emphasizes the closest alliance of 
rights and obligations for the sake of national efficiency. The 
political philosophy of Kant and Fichte was erected upon 
the conception of freedom as inherent in man. They were 
indebted to Rousseau for the idea, although it had been 
previously propounded by Locke in his ‘Treatise of Civil 
Government.” ‘‘Men,’ he said, ‘‘being by nature all free, 
equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate 
and subjected to the political power of another without his 
own consent.’ This proposition was derived from the six- 
teenth century Protestantism which appealed from tradi- 
tional authority to that of the reason and conscience of the 
individual.”! Moreover, far behind the Reformers one recalls 
Wyclif’s bold thesis that “everyone in a state of grace has 
real lordship over the whole universe.”’ 

Let us further remember that the Puritan Revolution of 
the seventeenth century, and the American Revolution of 
the eighteenth century, were based upon individual liberty 
exercised under equal social restraints. These historic gains 
from distinctively Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon sources make 
us independent of the Gallican influences of the ‘‘Contrat 
Social.””’ They reveal the slow and costly evolution of the 

21 Cf. D. G. Ritchie: ‘‘ Natural Rights,” p. 18, ff. 


® 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 173 


political privileges we enjoy, and require us to give credit 
to all concerned in their development. Thinkers of every 
school, notwithstanding their disabilities and difficulties, 
sowed the seed which has produced the harvest of democracy. 
This harvest in turn is being straitly winnowed by the Time 
Spirit which rejects the chaff and garners the grain. ‘Two 
ideals of the State are now to the front: the one is that of the 
Germanic-Teuton who holds to the empire of a typical State 
over the world, or else the downfall of the State; the other is 
that of the Anglo-Saxon who believes in the freedom of the 
world or else its slavery. Much which distinguishes the day 
in which we live is created by the collision between these two 
ideals. It is a day of great burdens, but of equally great 
opportunities, and I am persuaded that from it will be dated 
the prevalence of the Anglo-Saxon ideal. For this reason 
future generations will view the World War as we cannot. 
They will see in it, not only infinite loss but infinite gain 
which far exceeds the loss. Yet I predict that before the 
Anglo-Saxon ideal does prevail, many vital changes must 
take place. It behooves us to observe the beginnings of 
these changes with the accuracy due to the beginning moment 
as the supreme moment. Contemporary governments, the 
work of their different departments; and contemporary 
peoples, their social and industrial pursuits, are also to be 
observed by the Christian pastor and the Hebrew rabbi, with 
a concern that visualizes their importance. Above all else, as 
citizens, they should discern in America what unfits her for 
the highest duties of a world State, and wherein she is 
competent for the discharge of those duties. To prove out 
self-government, freedom, democracy, in modern times, is 
not less but more difficult than ever it was. But the 
proof can be made by men and women who unremit- 
tingly devote themselves to the religious and educational 
enlightenment of the people, and who believe that God 
is the author of social and universal as well as of personal 
redemption. 


174 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


V 


If you ask for the sources of information, guidance and 
strength which are available for this inspiring task, I refer 
you to the ethical teachings of the Old Testament, and to the 
Life and Gospel of Jesus Christ. Compare them with their 
most strenuous opponent in civilized States; with the Social- 
ism of Karl Marx, as found in his treatise of 1847, and quoted 
by Mr. John St. Loe Strachey, Editor of the ‘‘ London 
Spectator,” in a recent issue of that journal. Here you have 
face to face the two contestants for the franchise of the 
citizen in the modern State. None will treat the Marxian 
Manifesto cavalierly, if they reflect that in all probability 
it has made more converts in Europe and America during the 
last half-century than all the Protestant Churches of those 
two continents. Millions give it their unqualified allegiance; 
they look upon it, not as a political creed or a social theory 
alone, but as the sole religion of humanity. Here, then, is 
“Modernism” with a vengeance: not the cultured type of 
clerics and academics, but the type which is inseparably 
associated with the toiling masses, who have yet to learn 
from the Church the essential spirit and message of God’s 
Evangel. Mr. Strachey describes the Manifesto as a seques- 
tered document, from which the present tyranny in Russia 
gets its motive power; as one of the most alluring incentives 
to malignant thought and action which society at large has 
ever felt. Its propositions are, that overproduction is a 
peril; that class hatred and class war are obligatory; that the 
proletariat should rule by innate right, first, in the State, and 
eventually in the world. Their valid deductions are that 
abundance is created by artificial famine; that hate is a virtue; 
that strife is preferable to fraternity; and that the manual 
laborer is to form the next despotism because he stands in the 
logical succession of despots. Absolutism, oligarchism and 
constitutionalism have had their turn; now comes his, which 
he proposes to exploit to its farthest possibilities. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 175 


Democratic States instinctively oppose these propositions 
and their deductions because such States are the vantage 
grounds of that higher freedom which makes for social 
righteousness and not for a renewed tyranny. JEnglish- 
speaking States actively oppose them, because such States 
are measurably versed in the freedom of freedoms which is 
born of the Spirit of God. But all States that condemn 
Marxism must not reckon too much upon its financial and 
economic disasters. These it accounts for by asserting that 
the times are not ripe for its proposed deliverance of the 
underworld to universal empire. There is a likelihood that 
it will eventually dwindle and die in its own stench. But 
there is also a likelihood that the folly and covetousness we 
have observed in the modern State will make for Marxism 
some breach in society, through which its hosts of the dis- 
contented shall pour. If they are not to do this, States must 
get rid of their evasive diplomacies, their political fickleness, 
their emotional judgments, and their industrial treason. The 
riddance can only be made by a self-imposed religious reg- 
imen which gives to the citizen, whatever his creed may be, 
an inward and spiritual control; and admits him to actual 
communion with the highest law and the highest love. 
Science, politics, art, education, can prepare his way, but 
unless he finds divine fellowship at the end of that way, they 
will not save the State. 

Again, religion furnishes him with the social and moral 
objectives that can unite the right-minded majority for 
their positive attainment. If society needs anything today 
it needs these objectives. The late war showed what it could 
become under the intoxication of battle. What might it not 
become if filled with the spirit of altruism and sacrifice for 
those ideals which few dare to dispute, but almost fewer still 
believe to be practicable? If some of Britain’s best leaders 
have found the path to power by way of India, what power 
for right and justice awaits leaders of American politics, who 
shall assume our share of the burdens of humanity? 


176 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


So far as the alienated workers of the world are concerned 
in this issue, it is safe to assert that they have never yet been 
able really to live without a spiritual center. If they, like 
multitudes who do not bear their heavy burdens, have at 
last become eccentric without first knowing where the true 
center is, here is a calamity which churchmen must over- 
come. Not the less, but the more, do wanderers from the 
central Source of social and moral life need support, encour- 
agement, consolation and defense against oppression, whether 
from within or without their ranks. Church and State must 
realize that from this standpoint, politics, and the economic 
problems that cannot be separated from them, are psycholog- 
ical as well as prudential. Rabid nationalism, religious 
bigotry and class hatred are states of mind that do not readily 
yield to legislative measures nor pious protestations. They 
have to be encountered by a pronounced and reasonable 
fraternity, by the practice of just and generous living, by a 
far more inclusive sense of what St. Paul meant when he 
said: ‘Honor all men.”’ 7? 

But these qualities of heart and mind demand a super- 
morality which can only be supplied by religion. Here the 
problem is seen for what it really is: not merely political, 
economic, psychological, but always spiritual at its core. 
To solve it, the State should expand and redefine its ethic, 
stripping it of class favoritism, race prejudice and militant 
tendencies; formulating its foreign policies in those inter- 
national organizations which have been recommended by 
the safest political guides of our time. Every object that 
may be considered contributory to the progress of the race 
should obviously be encouraged by the State. What retards 
its progress should be opposed by the State, despite merely 
domestic considerations. ‘Then instead of rolling over the 
bodies and souls of men like a Juggernaut’s car, political 
influence will breathe through their lives like a quickening 
wind. Nevertheless, when these things are done, and they 

22 Cf. ‘The Return of Christendom,” by a Group of Churchmen. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE Dit 


are still a long distance from accomplishment, nothing but 
religion interpreted as love for God and all mankind, can 
save them from failure. 

Here precisely les the difference between two other views 
of the State and of the citizen’s obligations. In the dem- 
ocratic or humanitarian view, it is the servant of humanity, 
to be judged by what it does for the lives of its members and 
by the part that it plays in the society of mankind. In the 
metaphysical view, it is self-sufficient, isolated, sovereign, 
the custodian of its own affairs, beyond which its interests 
fade away unless those affairs are in question. In the demo- 
cratic view, the sovereign State is already doomed, and the 
nationalism it embodies will presently join the more primitive 
associations of the past. Nations, as we know them, are 
ultimately destined to subordination in a community of 
mankind. In the metaphysical view, the State must always 
remain as the supreme achievement of human organization, 
the best interpreter of the laws of God and reason, and the 
institution least likely to do wrong.”? 

One can find no middle ground between these two concep- 
tions. . Since life will do nearly everything else but stand 
still, it must express itself, as heretofore, in a further devel- 
opment of society, which will supplant nationalism as na- 
tionalism supplanted tribalism. The full logical idea of this 
expression is found in the New Testament. It is entirely free 
from narrow affirmations; entirely catholic in its outlook 
upon the future of the race. Though its documents were 
compiled beneath the political auspices of ancient Rome, it 
rejects the imperial unity of Roman politics, and refers all 
unity to the Federal Headship of its Risen Lord. It is the 
prerogative of Christianity to assert in unprecedented ways, 
the intrinsic worth of every individual soul and of all society; 
and to show how their worth can be realized in universal 


23 Cf. L. T. Hobhouse: ‘‘ The Metaphysical Theory of the State,”’ p. 137; 
John A. Ryan and M. F. X. Millar: ‘‘ The State and the Church,” p. 201; 
Frances J. McConnell: ‘‘ Democratic Christianity.”’ 


178 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


fellowship. In this fellowship there is no trace of our modern 
distinctions: ‘‘neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, 
no male and female; for all are one in Christ Jesus.” 74 
Such is St. Paul’s comment upon his Master’s words: ‘‘ Many 
shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down 
with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the Kingdom of 
Heaven.” 7? This is the divine mandate which overrides all 
human mandates as we understand them. In this indivisible 
unity is the brightest hope and the last phase of the whole 
family named after the one Father. 

Let us believe in the State, and in its inevitable move- 
ment toward the Father’s purpose. But let us also believe 
that the religion we dispense is the future faith, not only of 
the leading States of the earth, but of the enslaved, the lost 
and the despairing. Neitzsche’s sneer that it was only 
suitable for helots pays it a handsome tribute. For it began 
with outcasts and pariahs, headed by humble fishermen. 
Its doctrines of love and brotherhood constructed powerful 
nations out of the most unpromising human material, and 
taught them how to use their power; enabling them to 
establish beneficent governments and a growing civilization 
upon the débris of once mighty kingdoms. 

In summary, the Christian Scriptures recognize in the 
State a divine institution, and speak of its administrators as 
officers of a Higher Authority. They inculcate civil obe- 
dience, exhort the converts of the early Church to be in 
subjection to political authority, and to pray for those ap- 
pointed to exercise it. But their obedience and subjection 
are given as unto God; for the sake of their Lord, and not 
for the sake of man. Here are not two governments, each 
independent of or opposed to the other, but one unreserved 
allegiance, including political loyalty, and always superior 
to it. The ideal State is foreshadowed by the Apostle to the 
Gentiles, whose concepts had been moulded by Rome as well 


24 Galatians III. 28. 
#5 Matthew VIII. 11. 


THE CITIZEN AND THE STATE 179 


as by Jerusalem, and whose being had been transformed by 
his contact with Christ. St. Paul saw it as it should be, if it 
fulfilled its true end, when rulers are no longer a terror to the 
good, but to evil doers. He advises those who would be free 
from fear of the State, to be and to do good; and they 
shall have praise from the prince, who is God’s steward for 
righteousness. The gap between the State he portrayed, and 
that which we know, must be closed by the Christian Ecclesia, 
whose creation and growth are reviewed in the follow- 


ing lecture. 











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SIXTH LECTURE 
THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 


“Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace 
given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; 
and to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which 
for ages hath been hid in God who created all things; to the intent that 
now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might 
be made known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God, ac- 
cording to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our 
Lord; in Whom we have boldness and access in confidence through our 
faith in Him. Wherefore I ask that ye may not faint at my tribulations 
for you, which are your glory.” 

Ephesians III. 8-13 


SIXTH LECTURE 
THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 


The ideal and actual history of the Christian Ecclesia — Our Lord the 
Founder of the Church for a mission to all nations — Authority exer- 
cised by the apostles in fellowship with him — Development interrupted 
by deviations from Christ’s ideals which, however, repeatedly asserted 
themselves — Persecutions due to misunderstandings of the real pur- 
pose of the Church — The significance of Constantine’s conversion 
for the further spread of Christianity — The transition from Apostolic 
into Catholic Christianity marked by sacerdotal claims and question- 
able policies — St. Augustine’s crucial influence over Christian thought 
and behavior — Hildebrand’s notable Pontificate — The rise of City- 
Republics and the emergence of popular rights and liberties. 


Tue ideal history of the Christian Ecclesia does not exist. 
Such a history would have no predilections. Its viewpoints 
and appraisals would not indicate the particular denomina- 
tion, if any, to which the author belonged. Its critical merits 
would survive the keenest scrutiny, and the book itself would 
remain as the permanent authority of all intelligent church- 
men. But since so unique an example of profound scholar- 
ship and dispassionate statement is unavailable at this 
time, we must be content to consult the more modest yet 
trustworthy Church histories that serve the student well, and 
contain the latest results of original research. The best of 
these do not set out to prove a case, but to state it as it is, 
divested of prejudice and of doubtful or untenable theories. 
Many of them cover only a single personality, event or 
period of the Ecclesia. They give accurate and exhaustive 
accounts of Councils, controversies, schisms; of the rise of the 
Episcopacy, its monarchical essence, the revolt against it, and 
similar issues relative to doctrine or polity. Other histories 
weave these matters into a connected story, fascinating, 

183 


184 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


powerful, convincing, and one which does not cause the 
student to be of the mind of Falstaff’s tailor, who wanted 
better security than Bardolph could supply. 

I confess that I am largely dependent upon the material 
thus placed at our disposal by competent historians from 
Eusebius to Hort, Harnack, and the goodly number of mod- 
ern Church annalists. So I do not have to collate authorities, 
collect evidence, nor reproduce a given era with photographic 
detail and fidelity. I have no desire to gain kudos among the 
scholars absorbed in these useful pursuits, to whom I am in- 
debted for nearly all I know about the subject. Descriptions 
and references that I make must imitate the modern painters 
who project upon the canvas the broad contours which have 
caught the eye, and which also express the feeling and rhythm 
of the objects they depict. The first impression derived from 
the reading of Church history is that, unlike some themes, 
one cannot have too many books upon it. The Christian 
Ecclesia, her creation and growth, faith and practice, pre- 
sent to us the progressive stages of what is conceded to be the 
foremost spiritual achievement in the world. It is with the 
concrete aspects of this achievement that we have to do; with 
its wonderful birth, experience and work, its seeming defeats 
and real victories. 

The fact that “The holy Church throughout all the world”’ 
was a definite divine creation, when Nicetas, bishop of Re- 
mesiana wrote these words in the fourth century, is far more 
important for present and future civilization than all the 
theories or institutions of politics. She existed then, as now, 
visible to all men, an organization that had antedated the 
Bible, as we have it, by nearly two centuries: the Witness 
from the first century until the present day of invisible reali- 
ties. The Church of that far off time was co-extensive with 
Roman rule from Hadrian’s Wall to the Euphrates River. 
Her evangelists went beyond the frontiers of the Empire into 
the unknown East and West. She maintained in all the 
regions indicated substantially one teaching and one worship. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 185 


Her essentials have changed less than those of any other 
organization except the home. The federal rule of the Epis- 
copacy knit together scattered tribes and peoples. Among 
the Pontiffs and bishops who exercised it, those of Rome, 
Alexandria and Antioch stood out in an undisputed priority. 
True, separate and minor societies were found circling round 
the major Society like planets round the sun, but they only 
made her unity the more conspicuous. 

The Ecclesia proper was first called the ‘Great Church”’ 
by the pagan Celsus, who thus distinguished her from seced- 
ing sects. Her claim to have been such is indorsed by Harn- 
ack, and Bishop Headlam asserts in his Bampton Lectures 
that she was at that time recognized as the Church Universal 
by non-believers as well as by believers.! Those who are 
convinced that she was divinely originated will explain this 
marvellous advance by that conviction. Her preservation 
and enlargement since the fourth century and in the three 
centuries before it, are not readily explained in any other way. 
Origins in general, and that of the Ecclesia in particular, are 
thorny issues, about which numerous disputes foregather. 
The ancient world in which she appeared, as something appar- 
ently born out of due time, has vanished. It can never be 
fully recovered to us. Many of its factors remain shrouded 
in the mists of the past. The search for them is hindered by 
numerous erroneous speculations and assumptions. The 
competent scholars who conduct it concentrate upon the 
memorable literature of antiquity; upon its philosophers, 
poets, prophets and apostles; upon the principal events of the 
period that covered the four hundred years before the birth 
of our Lord, and the two hundred years after His death. 
The teachings and happenings of those great pivotal ages are 
still of supreme interest to mankind. 

The chief thing we know about them is that Christianity 
emerged from their heart as the united testimony of various 


1Cf. Arthur C. Headlam: ‘* The Doctrine of the Church and Christian 
Reunion,” p. 75f. 210 ff. 


186 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


races, over whom it had won a moral triumph of the first 
magnitude. Doctrinal theology deals with their testimony 
to the Faith from one standpoint; ecclesiastical theology 
from another. Both are often too abstract and technical to 
serve the purposes of historie narration; certainly both are 
prolific of differences. If one may be pardoned for saying so, 
what really matters is the emergence I have named. The 
greatest proof of Christianity is Christianity itself. Doc- 
trines and methods of government are first-rate secondary 
things, but they are secondary. And even origins can be 
overdone. If we are prepared to believe that the life of the 
Crucified and Risen Lord animated His disciples and resulted 
in the creation of His Ecclesia, by the Will of God, upon the 
foundation of Christ’s Person and Mission, then the process 
becomes explicable. However it is explained, the Church, 
like the sun, shines as a vital organization. She imparts 
great gifts to men, and they reverence her for the spiritual 
benefits which they receive from her. The majority do 
not trouble about the exact manner of her origin. To them 
its problems appear to belong to another world. They 
do not debate them; they live in and love the Church apart 
from them, and this, notwithstanding that those prob- 
lems are forever recurring, as they were at Nicwa and at 
Chalcedon. It suffices for the body of believers that the 
Church has had an unbroken tenure of existence in the 
world from what is, to them, an immemorial past. 

It is generally understood that she stoutly resisted the 
Paganism which at times seduced her outward being. Her 
children praise her because she has often enthroned humility 
and lowered the pride of earthly rank. They treasure her for 
her insistence upon sacrifice, and her denunciation of selfish- 
ness. They honor her for her opposition to the encroach- 
ments of unlicensed power, and to the provincial or racial 
arrogance which incited conquest and oppression. These 
are some of her credentials, not only for Christians, but for 
all lovers of justice and freedom. Had she done no more 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 187 


than they indicate, she would have proved herself worthy of 
human confidence. But the Church also denied the theory 
of separate descent which has served as the defense of slavery. 
She addressed her Evangel to men as men, regardless of race, 
color or condition. The first choice of her youthful period 
was for the poor, the helpless, the abandoned and the de- 
praved. Her backslidings and infidelities, the repeated out- 
rages of her inferior breeds upon the spirit and letter of the 
message committed to her care, should be recalled by us 
even if they are ever to be forgotten by the world. But they 
did not destroy the human hopes fixed upon her as,an eternal 
institution, nor alienate the love and confidence of her de- 
voted members. When evil days came, and corruption 
or tyranny deeply infected her visible rulers, she continued 
to adore her invisible King, and was usually in health 
and vigor of soul on the borders of her missionary activity. 
Those who turned from the transgressions of earth-bound 
ecclesiastics to the ideals they distorted or denied, found in 
those ideals a perennial source of consolation and of power. 
False doctrines and opinions which claimed her sanction; 
evil devices and deeds paraded under her name; jailings and 
burnings of Christians by those who professed the same 
Faith, could do everything possible against the Church, 
except destroy her. She remained alive, resumed her original 
teachings, enriched them from contemporary systems of 
thought, preached them everywhere. Her records are 
resplendent with pure, serviceable spirits whose names 
should be as familiar to us as those of the distinguished states- 
men of one’s country. Her reformative epochs, when she 
threw off the old, put on the new, and crystallized her energies 
afresh for the salvation of men and nations, have a fruitful 
significance for the present age. Her religious revivals, even 
revolutions, are as verifiable and recreative as any other 
methods she has employed. Thus she became what she still 
is: an indestructible reality which no explanations can belittle 
without introducing more difficulties than they remove. 


188 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


II 


Contrary to natural expectation, our Lord expounded no 
stated system of doctrine or of organization. But it is reason- 
able to affirm that the essence of His Message, and of the 
forms and institutions in which it took shape, were held as a 
unity by Him, and that what He revealed was germinal of its 
after developments. He used the language of life, not of 
philosophy; of parables, not of formal discourse. The 
fiction which conveyed the highest truths in lowliest terms, 
was His chosen method of communication. He concentrated 
upon a few fundamental verities that became the property 
of every conscience and of every age. His words contained 
explicit realities understood by ail who heard them, and 
also implicit depths of truth to be understood later by the 
initiated. Their spirit and life, immensity and freedom, 
could not be coffined in one interpretation. God’s seed was 
in them to germinate, and to bear fruit after its kind. They 
were certain to be variously construed; to undergo those 
adjustments demanded alike by their infinite content and 
by the ever widening necessities of the Faith.” 

His followers felt, as we feel, that He was the Gospel; its 
personalized center and the source of its regenerative power. 
Hence they endeavored to discover the inmost mystery of 
His Being. What in itself was actual, belonging to His very 
mind, was paramount with them. They differed honestly 
among themselves, as we differ, in proclaiming Him to others. 
These differences, which did not disturb their substantial 
agreements, indicated that He transcended all explanations. 
No categories, whether Synoptic, Pauline or Johannine, 
could contain Him, His works, or His words. I see no need, 
therefore, to view them as contradictory because they are 
separate accounts. Are they not rather to be codrdinated 
beneath the inherently selective principle already named, 


2 Cf. Arthur C. Headlam: ‘‘ The Life and Teachings of Jesus the Christ,’’ 
chapters V and VI. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 189 


as the most available hypothesis for the known facts of 
Christian history? Not a few who reject the evolutionary 
hypothesis in this connection, admit it in the physical realm, 
in society, in the State, in politics, in nearly everything save 
the Christian Faith. One is tempted to ask why that Faith 
or the Ecclesia should be exempted from what is, beyond 
question, a cardinal method both in Nature and Humanity. 
As a theory it was used by Newman in his “Essay on the 
Development of Christian Doctrine’; through which he 
hoped to silence the objections against Roman theology, by 
showing that it was an expansion of the original principles 
committed to the Apostles. Much that he advances in the 
Essay is admissible by Protestants, and his idea of the Church 
as a living growth, to be developed by its own potentialities, 
reacting upon society, and beneath the direction of the Spirit 
of God, proves how well Newman could have handled some 
theological problems of our age, by the aid of the biological 
learning which he unconsciously heralded. Upon its con- 
structive side, his argument makes him to some extent the 
progenitor of Modernism. 

The theory of development, as applied to the Ecclesia, 
ranks high in correspondence with the facts. It forbids the 
isolation of our Lord from the Church which bears His name, 
and which carries on His work in the world. Further, its 
application relates the Christian to the Jewish Ecclesia. 
This name itself had associations that linked it with the 
Hebrew Scriptures, and it was used by the Greek translators 
of the Pentateuch in their rendering of the Hebrew word 
“qahal’’, which means a gathering of men, or again, of 
nations. They were called out, not to be separate, but for 
purposes of assembly. This was its precise meaning in the 
Old Testament, and when the use of ékxAnota was adopted 
by the New Testament writers, it already had a local, na- 
tional and religious history connecting it with that of the 
Mosaic Commonwealth. Its actual use by Jesus is confined 
to St. Matthew. Doubts have been cast upon the credibility 


190 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


of his references, but Dr. Hort asserts that there is no a 
priort reason for suspecting them. In St. Matthew XVIII. 
17, our Lord speaks of the existing Jewish Ecclesia, before 
which an offending brother is to be summoned as a last re- 
sort. In St. Matthew XVI. 18, He elicits St. Peter’s great 
Confession, and declares that upon the Apostle as upon a 
rock of constancy, He will build His Ecclesia. This declara- 
tion established it in lineal succession with that of Israel, but 
to be completed and eclerste in the Covenant which He 
was yet to ratify.® 

The Church of Christian history does not have to be identi- 
fied with that to which our Lord referred in this familiar pas- 
sage. In a specific sense it was His own Ecclesia: the out- 
growth under His personal direction of the revelation of God 
in history, of which Christ was the culmination. One may 
maintain the belief that this universal Ecclesia, which He 
called “My Church,” and linked by inference with the Jewish 
Israel, has been from the first the mner soul and selfhood 
of all existing organizations which bear His name, and as 
such, the source of that indestructible unity now revived 
among Christians after their prolonged stay in the wilderness 
of sectarian divisions. The distinction is not negligible, 
since the truth often lies in such careful interpretations, and 
it is always wise to recall them if we would reduce the large 
sum of errors which obscure the issue before us. The gist of 
our Lord’s saying is its naming of the Christian Ecclesia, 
connecting it with that of Israel, and proclaiming its im- 
munity from future decay and death. Endurance, continu- 
ity, newness of life and power were the enduements with 
which He enriched it. It was built upon St. Peter and upon 
his fellow Apostles, who were equipped for their mission 
under our Lord’s authority, and because of their confession 
of His Messiahship. 

In the last hours of His Passion that mission was trans- 
ferred to them; with the accompanying symbols of the Holy 

3 Cf. F. J. A. Hort: ‘‘ The Christian Ecclesia,”’ p. 9 ff. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 191 


Supper as the Sacrament of their fellowship, and of the wash- 
ing of feet as the pledge of their service. The commandment 
that they love one another, enhanced with new meanings 
which Christ alone could impart; the parable of the Vine 
and the Branches, the promise of the Paraclete, the dedica- 
tory Prayer, were one solemn ordination of the discipleship 
as the infant Ecclesia. Here she was patterned in sacred 
conference and after the mind of her Lord; at Pentecost 
she was manifested to the world as a single visible Society, 
sustained by His Risen Life and its purposes, and held 
together by a common allegiance to Him. Professor Ben- 
jamin W. Bacon elucidates the matter at length, and says 
that there was “already a brotherhood in Jesus’ time”’; 
“its law of mutual service was formulated”; its “bond of 
perfectness which Paul makes the basis of a new sociology 
did not have to be invented for the Churches of Asia.” 
But Professor Bacon emphasizes the fact that “the word 
‘Church’ never occurs in the Gospels, save in two pas- 
sages of Matthew, one textually doubtful, both recognized 
by all modern students as belonging to that element of Mat- 
thew which is latest, and has least claims to authenticity.” 
To Pauline propaganda must be ascribed, he contends, the 
later content of the term Ecclesia. ‘If Jesus used this Greek 
word it could only be in its Old Testament sense.” In the 
one instance, we have ‘a mere rule of ecclesiastical proced- 
ure”’; in the other, “at best a prediction of the future, whose 
significance could only transpire after Jesus’ death.” The 
“brotherhood”? which began even in Galilee, and grew to 
something more at Jerusalem “had no sense of its real mis- 
sion until it became conscious of a work entrusted to it, to- 
gether with the power to fulfil that mission.” If the disciples 
conceived of our Lord, “‘in any sense or degree as the Re- 
deemer, it was only by virtue of being placed at the head of 
the Old Testament ‘Church’, the people of Israel.” ‘ Noth- 
ing,” insists this author, “can be more certain than that ‘the 
Church’, as we understand the word, is an outgrowth of 


192 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Jesus’s rejection and crucifixion, as these were reacted 
against by the faith and loyalty of His followers. Our con- 
clusion then must be that the beginning of the conscious life 
of the Church was its endowment with power through con- 
viction that God had raised Jesus from the dead.” 4 

The end justifies the scholarly caution with which Dr. 
Bacon treats this great issue. There is little in his exposi- 
tion which does not commend itself to those who apply the 
theory of development to the Ecclesia. He views it from 
its strictly historic side, as well as from the spiritual view- 
points which so phenomenal a creation demands. What he 
says is entitled to our respectful consideration, both for its 
own sake, and for the sake of his reverent and constructive 
learning. Changes were easily effected in an organization 
which, as yet, had taken on no rigid outlines. Processes that 
required centuries for their maturity were introduced without 
friction. From the moment at Antioch, when believers who 
previously had referred to one another as “of the way” were 
first called Christians, to the end of the Apostolic age, the 
Divine Society, as a vital entity, was susceptible to fresh 
impulses because unfettered by hard and fast regulations. 
St. Paul’s successful resistance of the Judaisers who sought 
to inter the new Faith in their old traditions, freed him for his 
evangelization of the Roman world. His conceptions of the 
Keclesia were for him a requirement of that revolutionizing 
crusade. In his letter to the church at Colosse, and still 
more in his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle uses mystical 
terms to set forth the Ecclesia as the Body of Christ, in which 
all believers are forever one, and of which He is the Head. 
The Church is indissolubly joined to Him, she is His chaste 
and beautiful Bride; her presence among men reveals the 
redemptive wisdom of God, which began in the past of the 
Creation, and was to be consummated in the future by the 
palingenesis of the earth through her. 


4 Professor Benjamin Wisner Bacon: ‘‘ The Founding of the Church,” 
p. 138 ff. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 193 


The pivotal saying already mentioned and ascribed to our 
Lord: “Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my 
Church,” echoes throughout New Testament literature. 
Influenced by it, the Apostles assumed and exercised an au- 
thority, not clearly defined, over the corporate life of the Ec- 
clesia. This authority was the legitimate outcome of their 
fellowship with Christ. I need not discuss here the contro- 
versial issue of their relation to the historic episcopacy, except 
to repeat the statements of one of the foremost of modern 
Anglican scholars, that “it is not to the Apostles we must 
look for the prototype of the bishop,” and that “the episco- 
pate was formed, not out of the apostolic order by localiza- 
tion, but out of the presbyteral by elevation; and the title, 
which originally was common to all, came at length to be 
appropriated to the chief among them.”’°® The first officers 
of the Church were the seven named in Acts VI. 5: Stephen, 
Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, 
upon whom the Apostles laid their hands to symbolize their 
approval and benediction. The priestly function was incipi- 
ent, if not active, since the Priesthood and the Sacrifice of the 
Lord Himself as sole Mediator predominated in the conscious- 
ness of the Apostolic Church. The title Hpiscopos indi- 
cated the office of the Elder or Presbyter, and these names 
were used interchangeably. The apparatus was simple, 
democratic, and from the Protestant standpoint, constitu- 
tional. Its officers did not supersede the freedom of the He- 
clesia. On the contrary, they invoked it for the safeguarding 
of the important interests committed to their oversight. 
The monarchical principle, which was of the nature of patris- 
tic and subsequent episcopacies, received a limited recogni- 
tion in the case of St. James at Jerusalem, and to a lesser de- 
gree in the temporary functions entrusted by St. Paul to St. 
Timothy and St. Titus at Ephesus and Crete respectively. 
The conclusion warranted from these and other relations is 
that Apostolic history was not a depository of infallible pre- 

5 J. B. Lightfoot: ‘‘Commentary on Philippians,” p. 196 ff. 


194 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


cedents to be strictly obeyed at all times and in all places. 
It imposed no Levitical code upon the vigorous and progres- 
sive life and liberty of the Church. Quite otherwise, it was a 
stirring record of victorous campaigns waged against appar- 
ently overwhelming odds. As those who accept the devel- 
opment theory would expect, it contained no series of final 
precedents or laws, made regardless of divine teachings and 
purposes which were capable of still further adaptation, and 
it was therefore inherently competent to meet changing needs 
and circumstances. The firm’belief of the Apostles and their 
converts that the prerogatives of the Ecclesia were inspired 
and guided by the Spirit of God, adds to their impressiveness 
and accounts for their success.® 


If 


The Church of the sub-Apostolic period was grounded in 
the fundamental truth that man’s salvation was accom- 
plished by the Crucified and Risen Jesus. He, as Lord and 
Redeemer of the World, enabled her to speak with a universal 
voice. Before the end of the second century she was looked 
upon as the ark of safety for the human race, and eternal life 
as the gift of Christ was regarded as an impossibility outside 
her pale. St. Cyprian’s dictum: “Extra ecclesiam hane 
visibilem nulla salus,” gave terse expression to a then preva- 
lent belief which was influential before his day. The bishops 
were no longer viewed as local officers, but as the inheritors 
of the Apostles, and the dispensers of that redemptive grace 
which had been communicated by them through a direct 
ordination. The teachings of the New Testament were to be 
understood only as an increasing body of traditions explained 
them. With the growth of the Christian Societies, these tra- 
ditions became more complex and required the application 


6 Cf. F. J. A. Hort: ‘‘ The Christian Ecclesia,” lecture V on ‘* The Exer- 
cise of Authority,” p. 76 ff. I am indebted to this instructive volume for 
many of the positions taken. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 195 


from time to time of orthodoxy’s multiplying articles. Ab- 
solute correctness of creedal expression was regarded as a 
theological virtue, apart from which the character and mean- 
ing of primitive Christianity would have been lost to man- 
kind. So the Holy Catholic Church developed out of the 
jurisdiction of the episcopal hierarchy, with whose existence 
it was identified, and apart from which there was no Church. 
Their prerogatives were enlarged by the deepening contrast 
between the ideal, unified and spotless Society of the Pauline 
letters, and the actual, struggling, local communions. These 
prerogatives were exercised for the enactment of laws, the 
administration of discipline, and the authorization of beliefs. 
The light which is inseparable from the life of religion 
waned; while faith, no longer regarded as a spiritual dynamie, 
depended upon stereotyped rules rather than upon affection, 
conscience and reason ‘The intellect became a drudge to 
what was called “the believing mind,” which in many in- 
stances was an ardent use of imagination, to sustain theories 
about Apostolic succession and its sacerdotal attributes. 
Any attempt to disparage these was set down as indicating a 
want of piety, or an intractable and rebellious disposition. 
In brief, the organization which has since been arraigned as 
a fantastic invention of ecclesiastical sophistry, and a flat 
contradiction of the purpose of our Lord, was the first charge 
of bishops and the idol of their flocks. 

That it had carnal elements and produced disappointing 
results is beyond cavil. Yet it protected and transmitted the 
Chrisitanity which it repressed. During those eras when 
God’s gifts had to be accommodated to the limitations of 
their earthly stewards, the contemporary literature was 
scanty enough. The “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” 
discovered by Bryennios in the Library at Constantinople in 
1875; the ‘‘Shepherd of Hermas’’; the two letters of Clement 
and those of Ignatius, the Martyrdoms of Ignatius and Poly- 
carp, and the Epistle to Diognetus complete the list. They 
reveal little of an inspirational sort, and simply serve to 


196 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


connect the Apostolic age with the later hierarchy to which 
Ignatius gave vehement adherence as the living nexus of the 
Ecclesia, derived from the Apostles themselves.’ 

The surprising progress of a despised and foreign sect in 
every province of the Roman Empire is partly explained by 
its exclusive character. The first Christian Societies lived 
precariously, and the civil power which dealt with them was 
in many respects an ironical comment upon St. Paul’s por- 
trayal of the ideal Ruler and State. Doubtless some believers 
felt strong impulses to assert their higher freedom in Christ 
in premature ways. Their loyalty to Him, like that of the 
whole Church, was undivided and indivisible. It suffered 
no rivalry, not even that of imperial Rome, to infringe upon 
the lordship of the Risen Reedemer and King. St. Paul’s 
sentiments toward the State were those of an educated Ro- 
man citizen, well aware of his civic rights, and not averse to 
asserting them in the hazards of his missionary journeyings. 
But these were not shared by the leaders of the Ecclesia of 
after days. They viewed the imperial government with ob- 
stinate and long-lived distrust, and Tertullian openly de- 
clared that the Christian preferred any other interests to those 
of the State. Origen’s defense of this indifference has been 
pointed out by Professor Gwatkin as a quibble. Others in- 
sisted that the Church could not be an enemy of the State, 
since her precepts furthered good morals, and so promoted 
national well-being. But officials of the State were slow to 
understand how any one who thus argued could refuse to 
support its institutions. 

It was an ambiguous moment, when Christians had not 
clearly differentiated between the evil elements of statecraft 
and those which made for just political conditions. Nor was 
the differentiation always apparent, especially where the 
practice of Emperor-worship had left its polluting traces on 
all departments of civil rule, affecting both public and private 


7Cf. Oscar L. Joseph: ‘‘ Freedom and Advance,’’ Chapter VI on ‘‘ The 
Christian Ministry,” p. 107 ff. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 197 


life. Those who held that Christ was universal Lord, could 
not profess a dual allegiance which would have degraded be- 
liefs dearer to them than life itself. It was not a case of Christ 
and Cesar, but of Christ or Cesar. Upon this issue, often 
inseparable, the Christians did not consider convenience 
first, and conscience second. Upright dealing with their own 
convictions was one of the sources of their fortitude: a virtue, 
however, which they are charged with having mistaken for 
what was really obstinacy. Why did the martyrs refuse to 
satisfy the requirements of the Roman Law? These, it is 
urged, were not excessive; in fact, they compare favorably 
with those imposed by Christians upon their fellow believers 
in a later age. A mere ceremonial offering of incense to the 
Genius of the Emperor was often sufficient to stay persecu- 
tion, and enable the accused to leave the tribunal in safety. 
Casuists who quoted the case of Naaman bowing blamelessly 
in the House of Rimmon, would have had little difficulty in 
framing a plausible plea for obedience to this demand of the 
State. But the Roman Christians refused to infringe upon 
the worship of the one God and the one Lord.® Their spirit 
of exaltation may have carried some martyrs beyond the 
bounds of discretion. Probably others felt a certain luxu- 
rious spiritual sensibility in daring the bitterness of death. 
But there was no softness in the sequel of their transports. 
If they anticipated joy in suffering, the suffering itself was 
real and frequent; and its brave endurance by them lifted 
Christianity to higher heights of conduct and influence than 
could have been attained by prudence and restraint. Thus 
the evolutionary process persisted, patient with human errors, 
conservative of divine elements. 

The further fact that the Church was organized from the 
first as universal, gave color to the plea that she was antago- 
nistic to an imperial World-State. Christianity was regarded 
by its followers as an independent, catholic and self-suffi- 


8 Cf. W. Emery Barnes: ‘‘ Hermas: A Simple Christian of the Second 
Century.” 


198 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


cient religion. It stood out in contrast to national religions 
like Judaism, or to any other cults of the age, and appealed 
to the soul’s deepest needs, not to financial endowments or 
political patronage. The idea that its Risen Master was about 
to return in glorious might and save His people from their 
enemies, made superfluous the identification of Christianity 
with earth’s temporalities. So the Church insisted on going 
her own way, while the Imperial State regarded the Church 
as an enemy in disguise. Conspiracies and plots were quite 
common, and consequently Christians fell under the general 
suspicion that their organization was secretly seditious, with 
rules, ceremonies and pass-words peculiar to itself. Although 
no systematic effort was made by the imperial authorities to 
put an end to the movement until the reign of Decius, (249- 
251) for many years before this date, the misunderstand- 
ings and hatreds of jealousy or ignorance brought serious 
trouble upon the Church, and led to her ostracism, or to 
occasional acts of governmental repression as a result of pop- 
ular riots. So far back as 64 A. D., when Nero was Emperor, 
he took advantage of the widespread prejudice against Chris- 
tians to accuse them of having set fire to Rome, and to insti- 
tute a short but savage persecution. Their traducers im- 
puted to them, and to their strange and despicable religion, a 
concealed flagitousness which made it hostile to the govern- 
ment and to mankind. 

About the year 111 A. D. and under the Emperor Trajan, 
the relation of Christianity to the law was more definitely 
ascertained. The younger Pliny, who had been sent as gov- 
ernor to Bithynia-Pontus, found there a great number of 
Christians, some of whom he examined and put to torture. 
He wrote to Trajan, proposing that he should give his vic- 
tims the opportunity of escaping execution by sacrificing to 
the gods, and cursing Christ. The Emperor by his rescript, 
which then had the force of law, approved of Pliny’s course. 
Thus the administration, even in the charge of a humane and 
scholarly proconsul, and under the direction of an able Em- 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 199 


peror, outlawed the profession of Christianity, but showed 
that it should be penalized with discretion as well as zeal.° 

One of Rome’s noblest historians, in referring to the 
Christians said: ‘‘The name was derived from Christ, who in 
the reign of Tiberius suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procu- 
rator of Judea. By that event the sect of which he was the 
founder, received a blow, which for a time checked the growth 
of a dangerous superstition : but it revived soon after and broke 
out not only in Judea, the original home of the pest, but 
even in Rome, where every thing horribly shameful collects 
and is practiced. Nero proceeded with his usual caution. He 
found a set of profligate and abandoned wretches who were 
induced to confess themselves guilty, and on the evidence of 
such men a number of Christians were convicted, not indeed 
upon clear evidence of their having set the city on fire, but 
rather on account of their sullen hatred of the whole human 
race. 1s. 

A great change was soon to take place when the principle of 
toleration for all religions was adopted. ‘The most remark- 
able document on the relation of the Pagan State to Chris- 
tianity — more remarkable than the rescript of Trajan to 
Pliny — is the edict which, in 311 A. D., closed the last great 
persecution. It was primarily the edict of Galerius, the 
fierce Dacian soldier, at whose instigation, Diocletian, his 
father-in-law, commenced the attempt at suppression. But 
it bears the names also of the other Cesars, Constantine and 
Licinius. And while it justifies the motives which had orig- 
inally led to that most savage and persistent attack, it con- 
fesses the futility of the attempt, and extends toleration both 
to individual Christians and to their Churches. Yet what 
is really conceded is a mere arbitrary toleration (venia, in- 
dulgentia), grounded on special reasons rather than on gen- 
eral principles.”” '! It nevertheless marked the repulse of the 


9 Cf. A. Taylor Innes: ‘“‘ Church and State,” p. 10 ff. Principal Herbert B. 
Workman: ‘‘ Persecution in the Early Church,” pp. 210-214. 

10 Pacitus: ‘‘ Annals,” XV, 44. Murphy’s edition (1822). 

11 A. Taylor Innes: ‘{‘ Church and State,” p. 21 f. 


200 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


civil power, after which Christianity remained the acknowl- 
edged master of the masters of the world, in which all religious 
beliefs were now tolerated. The Roman distrust of religious 
or any other secret orders was embodied in its constitutional 
law, and it remains to the present time as a somewhat dreary 
bequest from that law. 

Though there were a few converts in Cesar’s household, 
no large numbers of the aristocracy were reached by early 
Christianity. But in learned and philosophical circles many 
were won, both by the religion’s ethical superiority, and by 
its provocation of philosophical thought. That it could 
seem to be at once a simple way of living for the plain person, 
and a profound interpretation of the universe for the specu- 
lative thinker, meant much for its success. In spite of all 
opposition the Church steadily grew, until in March, 313, the 
Emperors Constantine and Licinius published the Edict of 
Milan, proclaiming the principle of complete religious liberty, 
and constituting Christianity a legal religion. Under Theo- 
dosius the Great (379-395) its orthodox forms, as established 
by the decisions adopted at Niczea in 325, were recognized as 
the State religion, and heathen worship was banned. 

The Edict of Milan, preceded as it was by Constantine’s 
so-called conversion on the 27th of October, 312, marked a 
decisive stage in the outward growth of the Church. The 
Emperor was conscious of her increasing strength and sought 
to enlist her membership for his rule. But it was not until 
his final triumph over Licinius, that pagan symbols disap- 
peared from the current coinage, and the Christian mono- 
gram or labarum, originally adopted from heathen temples, 
became a prominent device. From this time onward the 
Arian controversy demanded Constantine’s attention. He 
appointed the time and place for the Council of Nica, sum- 
moned the episcopate, paid part of the expenses out of the 
public purse, nominated the committees in charge of the order 
of business, and used his imperial office to bring about the 
adoption of the creed, punishing those who refused to sub- 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 201 


scribe to it.’ By presiding at the Council and afterwards 
pronouncing sentence of banishment against Athanasius, the 
Emperor closely identified himself with institutional Chris- 
tianity, and showed his determination to act as Pontifex 
Maximus in the regulation of religious matters. Although 
his baptism by Eusebius did not take place until 337, when 
Constantine lay upon his death bed, the reconciliation he 
effected had become a reality, and Christianity was installed 
as the official religion of the Empire. The Emperor’s mo- 
tives may have been dictated by political convenience, but 
his public acts were an hitherto unparalleled submission to 
the Church by the most powerful existing temporalities. If 
he hoped that she would, in turn, become the willing instru- 
ment of imperial absolutism, his hopes were doomed to dis- 
appointment. In the outcome she became its formidable and 
subtle foe. 

Thus, in a Council which elicited universal esteem because 
it was the first attempt to assemble the entire Episcopate, and 
after which subsequent Ecumenical Councils were modelled, 
the Rome that had formerly forbidden religions to prosely- 
tize outside their pale, least of all among Roman citizens, 
now publicly authorized the rule of Christianity. For cen- 
turies afterwards the chief religious and civilizing forces in 
the West were dated from this memorable surrender. It 
meant that the habitable world relinquished an alien and 
antagonistic position, and pledged itself to conduct its secular 
affairs in the embrace of the sacred life for which the Church 
was the channel. Out of this new relationship came a uni- 
versal ecclesiasticism independent of the civil power. How 
it could exist without absorbing or destroying the State soon 
became a vexed question; and Constantine, the son and suc- 
cessor of the first Christian Emperor, showed a spirit of re- 
sentment mingled with rashness against the toleration and 


12 Cf. ‘Encyclopedia Britannica,” (Eleventh Edition) Vol. VI, pp. 332, 
990; and Vol. VII, p. 310. 
13. Cf, William Temple: ‘“‘ Mens Creatrix,” p. 325 f. 


202 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


freedom of the Edict of Milan. Later, in the reign of Julian 
the Apostate, the reaction from the Edict took decided shape, 
and Pagan rule resumed control, only to be finally subdued 
by the growing dominac of the State Church. 


Mi 
IV 


The events narrated and the changes they wrought grad- 
ually developed Apostolic and sub-Apostolic into Catholic 
Christianity. In some respects the development was bene- 
ficial, in others a hated despotism became the symbol of the 
Kingdom of God. Absolutism and imperialism, as well as 
oneness of doctrine and discipline, were the salient features of 
the Church of the Fathers. Paganism, vanquished in the 
political realm, retaliated by impregnating clericalism. The 
decadence of the State naturally infected its official religion, 
and the Emperors assumed a control over the Church which 
was detrimental to her spiritual life. The bishops, who were 
primarily responsible for her witness to the Divine Order in 
the world, made deplorable concessions to the State. Her 
discipline was subordinated to notorious evils against which 
they seldom invoked the authority of their episcopate. The- 
ological ideas characteristic of the time, made Baptism the 
means and not the sign of salvation, and a similar logic 
evolved the perpetual sacrifice of the Mass out of the Eu- 
charist. The tradition of Apostolic Succession was magnified 
until it implied the setting up of the Papacy as the Vicariate 
of Christ. The impressive feature of this growth was its con- 
tinuity. Sacerdotal rule was not established by deliberate 
usurpation, but by an apparently intrinsic process evolved 
from the original propositions of the Faith. In the most de- 
pressing intervals of society and of the Church, the beauty and 
holiness of that Faith were expressed in the devotion of saints 
who were also theologians, evangelists and martyrs. Some 
whose names are connected with measures which were dis- 
astrous from the modern viewpoint, took joyfully the spoiling 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 203 


of their goods and the burning of their bodies. But these 
exemplary instances of consecration to higher things than 
offices and emoluments, did not rescue the Church from that 
self-distrust of her divine origin which induced her to behave 
like an extraordinary State. The State retaliated by ex- 
hibiting a contemptuous indifference for the real nature and 
mission of the Church. 

We have to keep steadily before us the genuinely conscious 
oneness which enabled her to withstand an enormous pres- 
sure of internal and external opposition. This unity was the 
sanctuary of God’s Spirit: the secret of a life which ecclesias- 
tical misdemeanors and crimes could not kill. A common de- 
pendence upon the Church preserved many values for us and 
created many precedents to which we still resort. She often 
made politics the instrument of morality, impressing upon 
after ages the fact that civilization was not only the heir of 
Hellenism, but still more of Hebraism; and, most of all, of 
the New Testament Evangel. The conviction that our Lord 
had founded, and had intended to found, a visible Church as 
the organization in which His truth should have rightful 
power, was firmly fixed in the contemporary mind. It also 
predominated in the medizeval mind. Nor has modern re- 
search discovered anything in the New Testament that sets 
aside this historic conclusion. Christianity, as conceived 
by its past leaders, could not have survived had there 
not been a Church built according to their plan as its fortress. 
One need not recite the names and deeds of Pontiffs, Bishops 
and Fathers, who were then reverenced and obeyed. It is 
enough to say that while we do not render them blind hom- 
age, we should consistently esteem and love them as Elder 
Brethren of the Household of Faith and Princes of the Chris- 
tian Israel. Their rule was a kind of reckless idealism, with 
spiritual aims too often vitiated by false methods. If the 
Church was all that they insisted she was, the people 
realized that she ought to govern the whole of life. But 
in attempting to do this she descended to policies and 


204 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


agencies which lowered her claims and contradicted her 
professions. 

In the West, the City of Rome captured the patriotism 
of the Imperial State and the imagination of the Church. 
The removal of the seat of government to Constantinople, 
with a deputy at Ravenna, increased the importance of the 
Roman Papacy, which reached a height the Patriarchate 
of the Eastern Church could never have attained. Antioch, 
Jerusalem, Alexandria, and even Constantinople were pro- 
vincial when compared with the metropolis on the Tiber. 
Although many outstanding dignitaries of the Church were 
frequently found elsewhere, a hieratic atmosphere enveloped 
the Roman See, whose Pontifis were notable for their sound 
practical judgment and administrative ability. The work 
of Leo had been the decisive factor in the conflicts waged at 
Chalcedon and Nicexa. Yet men of the stamp of Tertullian 
and Cyprian belonged to the African Church; Clement, Ori- 
gen and Athanasius were of Alexandria; Polycarp, Irenzus, 
Theophilus and Ignatius were of the Eastern Church. 

But St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine were the preéminent 
representatives of the Catholic Christianity of the time. In 
the East, the great John of Antioch was renowned for his 
complete mastery of all the arts of sacred discourse, and 
for the calm courage with which he endured his banishment 
from the scenes of his moving eloquence. In the West, St. 
Augustine showed a constancy, resurgent over the appall- 
ing catastrophe of the fall of Rome in the early fifth cen- 
tury, when he wrote “De Civitate Dei.” The occasion of his 
famous apology encircled it with a solemn grandeur. After 
ten hundred years of unequalled political organization and 
government, the Eternal City had been captured and sacked. 
Her collapse shook the habitable world; the wild rumor 
spread that her fate was but the prelude to the dissolution 
of the globe itself. ‘My voice falters,’ cried St. Jerome, 
“sobs stifle the words I dictate, for she is in the hands of her 
enemies who enthralled the earth!’ In the subsequent 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 205 


crisis, St. Augustine overcame his dismay, which had been 
overwhelming, by idealizing the City of God. He had wit- 
nessed a stupendous calamity which for the time being 
crushed the fabric of civilized society. Further reflection 
convinced him that no temporal State, though it persisted 
through the centuries, could postpone by an hour its ap- 
pointed doom. If Rome could be overthrown; if an Empire 
to which men had attributed an inviolable sanctity, and an 
authority which stretched from the borders of India to the 
western coasts of Britam, was vulnerable, then everything 
visible was but a fleeting show. 

Moreover, the Church was denounced as the aie con- 
spirator against the Empire. Multitudes who were still 
pagans at heart attributed its sorrows to her. Their accu- 
sations were as false as some others afterwards made against 
Alaric and his invading hosts. The disintegration of the 
Empire began long before he appeared at the gates of its cap- 
ital. Its work was done and could not be undone. Its perma- 
nent elements were absorbed in later forms of society. Its 
assimilating force, preparatory though it was for freedom, 
was not that freedom. When the agonies of its dissolution 
had subsided, visioned men perceived that they were the 
pangs of rebirth, not of death. Nevertheless, while the chaos 
reigned, St. Augustine girded himself for the defense of the 
Church against her foes. His work, the most learned prod- 
uct of his matured genius, was a recognition of theocracy as 
the foundation of human rule, and of religion as the deter- 
minant of human welfare. It pulverized the charges levelled 
at the Church. But its lasting values are found in its original 
treatment of history as the registration of the Divine pur- 
poses. Had he been more of an individualist, like Origen, 
St. Augustine could not have become so aggressive and con- 
structive a thinker. Though the main burden of his treatise 
was to vindicate the God of the Christians against the at- 
tacks of heathen orators, and to absolve the Church of any 
guilt for the wreck of the imperial State, he presently passed 


206 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


from these themes to deal with the visible militant Church, 
and with the communio sanctorum, of which that Church was 
an imperfect embodiment. 

His truly great mind was not always clear and compact 
in its thinking. Such minds seldom are. They have few 
qualifications for well-rounded magazine articles. But his 
thought has been plundered by far lesser men who were not 
always consistent with their source, some of whom he would 
have vigorously repudiated. Nor did he carry out to their 
logical conclusions the reasonings he advanced. He wrote 
as a mystic as well as a statesman; as a prophet whose words 
went beyond immediate conditions, and who foresaw some 
ideals still to be fulfilled. His weightiest argument was that 
the organization of the world, as a human society separated 
from God, was a capital offense sure of punishment. He had 
no intention of explaining the respective policies of Church 
and State. But he clearly understood the nature of the con- 
flict between them. It was more than the clash of two antag- 
onistic institutions; it was the passion for self as opposed to 
the passion for God. As one of the few really great spirits who 
have loved God with consuming fervor, St. Augustine spent 
his magnificent strength on this opposition. He denounced 
the Donatists for their efforts to evade all civic responsibili- 
ties, and asserted that the latent anarchy of their attitude 
warranted the exercise of State authority against them. 

In the section of ‘De Civitate Dei” entitled “The Mirror 
of Princes,” he drew a portrait of the righteous ruler under 
whose guidance the ideal State and the ideal Church co-ex- 
isted and were complementary. Dissensions occurred be- 
tween them, not because they were congenitally antagonis- 
tic but because they were imperfect. Were both what they 
were intended to be, a natural harmony would govern their 
intercourse. On the other hand, there could be but one King- 
dom: that in which Christ was the acknowledged King. The 
true Commonwealth was composed of just and enlightened 
spirits, consecrated to their Risen Lord, and obedient to His 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 207 


teachings. His conceptions of divine sovereignty, of the 
Keclesia as the Second Parousia, which also made her, in this 
sense, the actual Kingdom that some anticipate, do not call 
for discussion here. It was a distinct descent, however, for 
so practical an idealist even to advise that physical compul- 
sion should be employed against the Donatists. Given by 
lesser men, the advice might not have been so mischievous; 
given by St. Augustine, it was employed to sanction the 
persecutions which afterwards disgraced ecclesiastical do- 
minion. For those who believe that the State is concerned 
with things temporal, the Church with things eternal; that 
the State coerces, and appeals to fear, the Church to the 
love that casts out fear, much that St. Augustine advocates 
will not be attractive. He was not always careful to dis- 
tinguish between the ideal and the actual Church, and in 
other ways he showed that consistency was no foible of his 
massive mind. But he stood at his post in a cataclysmic 
age, when other noted Christian leaders forsook their duty 
for a useless seclusion. It would be superfluous to further 
praise a Saint and Father, a philosopher and theologian, a 
laborious bishop and statesman, whose ideas, despite the 
changes of sixteen centuries, have moulded the politics and 
the religion of the Western peoples; and whose treatise, “De 
Civitate Dei’’ was the precursor of nearly all similar specu- 
lations upon the universal Commonwealth of man.!4 


V 


The Roman Pontiffs were not of equal intellectual rank. 
But the great majority of them, however, realized their 
grave responsibilities and faithfully exercised their functions. 
Gregory the Great (590-604) was one of the first Popes to 
consolidate the European nations in behalf of a central au- 

14Cf, J. N. Figgis: ‘‘ The Political Aspects of St. Augustine’s ‘ City of 
God’’”’: W. Montgomery: “‘ St. Augustine, Aspects of his Life and Thought”; 


Adolf Harnack: ‘‘ History of Dogma,’’ Vol. V. p. 3 ff; “* The Cambridge 
Medieval History,’’ Vol. I. Chapter XX. 


208 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


thority. As the wealthiest citizen of Italy, the eleemosynary 
work undertaken at his initiative and expense, virtually made 
him the superior of the Emperor in the East. The worth 
of Gregory lay in his candid expression of his own time. Its 
strength and weakness were dramatically displayed in this 
Pope who saved Rome from the Lombards. Not a little 
acrimony was evinced in the correspondence between him, 
the Emperor Maurice and the Patriarch of Constantinople. 
But Gregory held and justified his strategic position at a 
transitional moment. He deserves our grateful remembrance, 
because, though burdened with the cares of the Pontificate, 
he seized the opportunity to despatch the missionary Augus- 
tine to England for her conversion. Moreover, the two main 
pillars of the Medizeval Church — Monasticism and the 
Papacy — were set up by Gregory; and they sustained its 
superstructure for four fiercely contentious centuries to 
come. !° 

The Holy See now became an empire in itself. Its officers 
rivaled the territorial princes, and assumed prerogatives 
which forced Church and State into collision. A general 
peril temporarily arrested their disputes between the years 
717 and 732, when Mohammedanism’s military prowess 
conquered Spain and threatened the conquest of Christen- 
dom. The danger was averted by Charles Martel, who de- 
feated the Moslem invaders at Tours (732) and earned the 
title of the Saviour of Gaul. Leo III also delivered Con- 
stantinople from the attacks of the Moslem prophet’s fan- 
atical soldiery. Both these celebrities were champions of 
the Cross, yet ecclesiastical prejudice prevented their re- 
ceiving the rewards due to their brave exertions. The one 
was accused of interfermg with Church property; the other 
of heresy. Although Nicholas I (858-867) had only a short 
Pontificate, he advanced the papal claims by his defiance of 


15 Cf. F. Homes Dudden: ‘‘ Gregory the Great, His Place in History and 
Thought,’’ two volumes; ‘The Cambridge Medigval History,” Vol. I. 
Chapter VIII. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 209 


the Eastern Emperor Michael the Drunkard, in defense of 
Ignatius, the deposed patriarch of Constantinople. His in- 
flexibility concerning the sanctity of marriage against Lo- 
thair, King of Lorraine, and his chastisement of certain 
rebellious prelates made his administration famous. Such 
a Pontiff did not need the argument of the ‘False Decre- 
tals” in his behalf. His lasting influence emanated from 
his character and policy, not from a spurious document 
which voiced contemporary sentiments upon Church au- 
thority, but was not, as so advertised, of ancient origin. 
The growth of Canon Law in Western Europe created a 
conception of the Church that afterwards culminated in the 
Pontificates of Hildebrand and Innocent III. That Law was 
emphasized by the circulation of the ‘‘False Decretals”’ re- 
ferred to a moment ago, and which included the forged 
Donation of Constantine.’ As we have noted, after the 
Peace of Milan the whole problem of Church and State had 
passed into a new phase. The Empire recognized Christian- 
ity, but in so doing it did not intend to relinquish its own 
supremacy. In various ways Constantine’s successors 
showed that to them the Ecclesia was a branch of the Civil 
Service, side by side in particular instances with the heathen- 
ism it had displaced. This conception has never been en- 
tirely eliminated in the Eastern Church. The Emperors of 
that division of the imperial Roman rule always ranked above 
the Patriarchs, for which reason, the Russians, at the time of 
their conversion, adopted Eastern rather than Roman ecclesi- 
asticism, because the former left much more authority than 
the latter to the autocracy of the State. Hence the late Rus- 
sian Tsardom carried the theories of Constantine into the 


16 The Decretals originated in the efforts of the bishops of Northern France 
to escape from the overlordship of their archbishops by developing the idea 
of appeal to Rome. The Donation of Constantine was embodied in the 
Decretals as a part of the process and emphasized his gift of the ‘‘ Patrimo- 
nium Petri’ to the Church. Cf. ‘‘ Encyclopedia Britannica,” (Eleventh Edi- 
tion) Vol. III. p. 916; Vol. VIII. p. 409; M’Clintock and Strong: Vol. IT. 
p. 734, 861; ‘‘ Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia,” Vol. ITT. p. 486; ‘‘ The Catholic 
Encyclopedia,”’ Vol. V. pp. 119-121, 773-780, Vol. XIV. p. 257. 


210 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


twentieth century, combining the spiritual and temporal 
sovereignties in itself. 

Until the ninth century the Roman Church kept inviolate 
her resolution that secular rulers should not control the Pon- 
tiffs, who were still nominal subjects of the Emperors. The 
three factors conducive to this end, Feudalism, Chivalry 
and Monasticism, have been previously mentioned. ‘Two 
main ideas were crystallized by their united aid. The first 
was a world-federation of Christians to be achieved through 
the Empire; the second, the sovereign authority of the Church 
as residual in the Papal States. Perhaps “the safest judg- 
ment which we can form on the whole character of the ninth 
century is this, that men were convinced that each power had 
its own appropriate sphere, but that they were also keenly 
alive to the fact that in practical life the two spheres inter- 
sected, and that no general principle could enable them to 
determine with regard to many questions, what exactly was 
the sphere of the State and what the sphere of the Church.” 
It was not until the middle of the eleventh century that the 
political upheavals in Germany, and the incipiency of the 
conflict between the Papacy and the Empire, forced men to 
reéxamine the principles that underlay the social order. 

So much in anticipation. To revert to the sequence of 
events: the work of resettlement begun in Northern France 
was completed on Christmas Day, 800, when Charles the 
Great inaugurated Medievalism by the foundation of the 
Holy Roman Empire. It rested on the declaration that while 
the old Empire was continued, it was no longer Eastern but 
Roman, and owed no further allegiance to the Emperors at 
Constantinople. For the second time Rome became the 
mistress of the Western world; and its Caesars, who were 
elected at Rome and crowned by the Pope, were allied with 
the Vicars of Christ. In an age when ideals were everything 
and practice was meager, such an alliance was almost sure 


17R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle. ‘‘ A History of Medizval Political 
Theory in the West,’’ Vol. 1. p. 257 f. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 211 


to be effective. In theory, Church and State were equal, 
but in the outcome, vigorous and able Emperors like Otto 
the Great and Henry III bore down upon the Popes, even 
electing and deposing them when they deemed it necessary. 
From 800 to 1050 the Pontificate had also to contend against 
the factions within the Church, and against the militant 
Roman nobles. But after the reign of Frederic III imperial- 
ism declined, became subordinate to the Holy See, and so 
remained until the rise of Nationalism. A great deal of con- 
temporary literature turned upon the transference of the seat 
of empire from East to West. By what legal right had the 
transfer been made? The answers varied: some dwelt upon 
the fact that an Empress then reigned at Constantinople; 
others discussed the lawfulness of the act in the light of the 
Pope’s coronation of Charles as the first Emperor of the 
West. 

During the opening days of the eleventh century, the theory 
of imperial rule was recast by the revival of papal author- 
ity. The leader of the revival was Hildebrand, one of whose 
immediate predecessors, Gregory VI, had been deposed by the 
Emperor. A man of genius and courage beyond words, 
Hildebrand’s title, Gregory VII, was chosen for him by the 
Cardinals of the Conclave, as a protest against the imperial 
despotism. He became Pope on April 22, 1078, at a time 
when the Church was wide in domain and united in doc- 
trine, but disorganized and weakened in her centralized rule. 
For a hundred years before Hildebrand’s restoration the 
Holy See had been the sport of Roman factions and their 
chiefs. Yet despite political disturbances of the capital and 
of Europe, the Church remained a single body, supernational, 
with her own government, laws, and language of worship. 
For some years before his elevation to the papal throne, 
Hildebrand had been its trusted counsellor, who ceaselessly 
proclaimed its spiritual dignity and renown, and after his 
elevation he revolutionized the conception of his great office. 
As the Cardinal Deacon who inspired the policies of Leo IX, 


212 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Stephen X, Nicholas II and Alexander IT, he had been largely 
instrumental in placing the election of Popes in charge of 
cardinal-bishops, whose choice was to be confirmed by the 
clergy and the Emperor, although the participation of the 
latter was left somewhat nebulous. The purpose of the 
change was not only to prevent the invariable disorders 
hitherto attending papal elections, but especially to free the 
Church from the secular interference of the Empire. Hailde- 
brand “was determined to put down simony, the buying and 
selling of ecclesiastical offices, and to restore the spiritual 
independence of the Church as represented by the freedom 
of election to great pastoral and administrative offices.” ® It 
was this determination that precipitated the approaching 
struggle. The best scholarship shows that its governing 
conceptions were neither solely original with Hildebrand nor 
to be attributed to the influence of Cluniac Monasticism. 
Although he has been claimed by French authors as a monk 
of Clugny, he had no connection with that celebrated retreat, 
nor was he ever a monk.” To Waso of Liége, whose inter- 
pretations of Canon Law were widely received in the Rhine 
provinces, and to Cardinal Humbert, whose “De Simonia”’ 
voiced the views of the reforming group in the Curia, must 
be ascribed in part the intellectual genesis of Hildebrand’s 
gigantic scheme. He doubtless studied Humbert’s treatise, 
in which the author depicted Henry IT in hell, notwithstand- 
ing that monarch’s service to the Church, because of his un- 
warranted intervention in her affairs. But Hildebrand’s 
ideas were to a large extent his.own, and he was the real 
founder of the unique hierarchy of Medivalism. 


18 J. Vernon Bartlett and A. J. Carlyle: ‘‘ Christianity in History,’ p. 415. 

19 The only contemporary source for this claim is a voluminous work by 
Bonizo of Sutre, amplified in the next century by Otto of Freising, who 
even asserted that Hildebrand had been prior of Clugny. The confusion 
arose from another cleric of the same name. For a decisive study of the 
issue see Marteus: ‘“‘ Gregory VII”’ Vol. II. p. 281 ff. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 2138 


VI 


He struck at the source of interventions by impeaching the 
dual headship of the Empire. Hitherto this had been regarded 
as the covenant of covenants, the “imperium” and the 
“sacerdotium” formally accepted by all, and previously 
acknowledged by Hildebrand himself as comparable to the 
two eyes of the human body. He now discarded the theory 
and changed the metaphor. The sun stood for the Church; 
the moon for the State. What light temporal jurisdiction 
enjoyed was borrowed from the spiritual supremacy. This 
he proposed to organize afresh in a vast United States of 
the world, over which the Pontiff of Rome should preside as 
the very Vicar of God. To the several states of the new Fed- 
eration could be delegated the maximum of domestic auton- 
omy, consistent with the full control and duty of an infallible 
and ghostly sovereignty. The Pontiff, and he alone, must 
answer “on the dreadful day of Judgment before the just 
Judge,”’ for the conduct of his royal underlings, as well as for 
the discharge of his own measureless obligations. The busi- 
ness of kings and princes, whose very being, as Hildebrand 
contended, was in itself a result and proof of the fall of man, 
was to maintain order, dispense justice, extend trade and 
promote the general welfare in correspondence with local 
needs and usages. They were but the pro-consuls of a uni- 
versal spiritual empire, from every province of which appeal 
could be taken to the Holy See. To quote Hildebrand’s 
own words, the Pontiff “alone held the keys of heaven and 
hell, and he alone was able to bind on earth and loose in 
heaven, to give and to take away, according to the merits of 
each man, empires, kingdoms, duchies, countships and the 
possessions of all men.” 

Two corollaries of this amazing theory must not be over- 
looked. If the Pope was supreme over the State, by so much 
the more was he supreme in the Church. The centralization 
of all government in the Holy See naturally involved 


214 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


the centralization of ecclesiastical government. To Rome 
all its disputes must be referred; by Rome all offices of 
the Church must be filled; from Rome all her legislation 
must proceed. Without the papal sanction neither the 
canons nor the acts of provincial councils or of metro- 
politan bishops were warranted. These views, of which 
Hildebrand was perhaps not the sole author, but certainly a 
more thorough and fearless exponent than any of his prede- 
cessors, necessarily curtailed the power of the episcopacy, and 
of the rest of the higher clergy. The records of his reign tell 
of his continual controversies with abbots and prelates as 
well as with secular princes. A second consequence of his 
theory was the increased importance of the papal legates. 
In the practice of Hildebrand they became his vicars, holding 
within the limits of their instructions the plenitude of his 
powers; therefore, above ambassadors or proconsuls of impe- 
rial Rome, and superior to all local authority, temporal or 
spiritual. 

The modern mind is dazed before the magnitude and bold- 
ness of such assertions. Nor is its wonder lessened when we 
find that Hildebrand invested individual Pontiffs with an 
infallibility which went beyond that of the Vatican decrees 
of 1870. As he held it, the Pope’s word was simply and 
purely God’s word. It has to be remembered that for the 
Christians of that day such conclusions were the accepted 
creed of the Church. The premises upon which they rested 
dismayed few, and were denied, if at all, by a very small 
minority. The majority of thinkers, and all the unthinking, 
believed in the absolute right of consecrated rulers as implic- 
itly and as unreservedly as we believe in the law of gravita- 
tion. Hildebrand interpolated one further remove in the 
absolutism everywhere extolled. Since the divine right of 
kingship came to the throne through the consecration of the 
Popes as God’s vicegerents, they must be above the thrones 
they consecrated. One of his favorite syllogisms puts the 
issue: “If Peter and Paul judge spiritual things, what must 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 215 


we believe to be their power over earthly things? If they 
judge the angels who rule over princes, what can they not do to 
their slaves?’ When he applied to his Pontificate the words 
addressed to Jeremiah: “See, I have this day set thee over 
the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break 
down and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant,”’ 
there was no criticism, high low or middle, to question his 
exegesis.”2_ There is not a scintilla of evidence that this great 
Pontiff trembled at his own deductions, or foresaw that 
they made political rule negligible. The story current of his 
writing to the Emperor Henry, beseeching him to refuse to 
confirm his election to the papal chair, is one of those inven- 
tions that testify to a hidden truth which Hildebrand’s 
private letters to Lanfranc and other intimates corroborate. 
They are full of the agitations of a very noble nature deeply 
aware of human infirmities while called upon to bear infinite 
burdens. The sincerity of his beliefs and convictions is be- 
yond question. In his speeches, and in his excommunication 
of Henry IV, one can visualize him with uplifted hands and 
eyes addressing St. Peter in Paradise. It appears to us as . 
though to him that Apostle was the living captain of God, for 
whose command he waited; with whom he identified himself so 
completely that their union was perfected. The mortal head 
of an immortal dynasty, he lived in an exalted consciousness 
that the spirits of light or of darkness attended every mo- 
tion of his heart and mind. 

Nevertheless, as Pope he knew neither shrinking nor tim- 
idity. The King of Denmark and the Duke of Poland were 
informed that their States owed tribute to the Holy See; and 
they promptly paid it, for over their devoted heads Hilde- 
brand brandished what he described as ‘‘the sword of apos- 
tolic punishment.”’ He demanded that Hungary should be a 
papal fief by virtue of the supposed transfer of that country 
to the Papacy by St. Stephen. Corsica, Sardinia and Spain 
were bluntly told by him that they were a part of Constan- 


20 Jeremiah I. 10. 


216 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


tine’s Donation. He wrote to the reigning princes of Cas- 
tile, Aragon and Leon, within a few days of his election as 
Pope, that “their countries were of old time the property of 
St. Peter, and, that notwithstanding their long occupation by 
pagans, they still belonged to no mortal.” The territories 
wrested from the Saracens must also be held in fief from St. 
Peter. When Philip I of France refused to desist from his 
traffic in holy things, his subjects were released from further 
obedience to him, and the whole realm was laid under inter- 
dict. As for the Gallican bishops and their dread of the royal 
displeasure, ‘‘it is useless,’ wrote Hildebrand, “for the stren- 
uous soldiers of Christ to speak to them.’’ They were no more 
than dust in the balance of a Pontiff who at one time had 
excommunicated every archbishop in France. When Solo- 
mon, King of Hungary, proved refractory, Hildebrand de- 
throned him for a rival who was glad to acknowledge himself 
as the Pope’s vassal. When his Norman feudatories repudi- 
ated their allegiance, he did not hesitate to excommunicate 
his own allies. He wrote to Svend, King of Denmark, that 
there was ‘‘a very rich province on the sea coast, not far 
from us, held by a vile heretic,’’ which one of Svend’s sons 
might well acquire and hold in the name of St. Peter; thus 
setting Norman against Norman. 

In every part of Europe his legates reduced the royal pres- 
tige, and executed the behests of that clear and intrepid 
brain which controlled from the throne of Rome the temporal 
and spiritual jurisdiction of Christendom. Nothing seemed 
to escape his notice. The cruel treatment of shipwrecked 
sailors, the sale of their wives by the Scottish tribesmen, the 
outrages of some petty chieftains in Ireland, were as vividly 
before his gaze as the weightiest matters of divine law. Only 
in England did this imperial overseer of rebellious princes and 
prelates meet a repulse, to which I have already referred. In 
May, 1080, after Hildebrand’s famous victory at Canossa, 
his legate, Cardinal Humbert, was instructed to exact from 
William the Conqueror a recognition of his feudal dependence 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 217 


upon the Pope. The message, though verbally conveyed, was 
couched in terms which ran through Hildebrand’s letters 
from the time of the excommunication of Emperor Henry IV. 
In the abstract, it sisted that William should do homage to 
the Pope’s position as the suzerain of all earthly potentates, 
and their personal representative before the judgment seat 
of Christ. But in turning this abstract idea into a command 
Hildebrand mistook hisman. ‘I hold my own Kingdom of 
God and my own sword,” was the answer of the stark Con- 
queror, as he spurned the required oath of fealty. 

We need not tarry to pass lengthy judgment upon Hilde- 
brand’s conception. No unprejudiced intellect can withhold 
its tribute of reverent admiration from this matchless ideal 
of a spiritual power upraised far beyond all worldly strife: 
arbitrating between warring monarchs and turbulent States 
in the inerrant light of divine truth and righteousness. A 
erim fact-facing attitude was Hildebrand’s primary reaction 
to the tempestuous life around him. Here and there, in his 
private self-revelations, we catch the echoes of a thwarted re- 
ligious romanticism. For his was a short-lived triumph des- 
tined to defeat. Yet its intense psychological interest sub- 
dues our moralizings. Sympathy, rather than censure, is 
appropriate for this superman who, nevertheless, found the 
world’s problems too great for him. He chose to be human 
life’s foremost partaker rather than its mere spectator; and 
he lived tremendously. Consider also the wastrels, the cai- 
tiffs, the crowned tyrants and titled rascals, who were then 
more plentiful than honest leaders and princes. ‘Their plot- 
tings and murderings furnish the dark background for an 
unparalleled pontifical mission, the prerogatives of which 
are not to be determined by ordinary standards of success or 
failure. Its faith in the powers of the world to come was a 
radiant gleam playing on the prevalent darkness. The suppo- 
sition that he who held it could build a cage from which none 
could escape the Highest Will was a mistaken one. But 
what lover of God has not felt at intervals Hildebrand’s de- 


218 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


sire to protect humanity from its intolerable iniquities and 
sufferings. If this priestly king and kingly priest revolted 
against the sorrows and tragedies which seemed likely to 
stretch out till the crack of doom, his revolt was pure in its 
motive and magnificent in its daring. 

Human beings hidebound by custom and tradition, en- 
tangled in a social environment which made the slightest 
progress almost impossible, slaves to the apparitions of their 
forefathers as well as to very visible and merciless monarchs, 
were the raw material with which Hildebrand had to work. 
The least imaginable scope was allowed his remarkable gifts 
for change and betterment. His titanic strength was of ne- 
cessity dragged down by the weakest and the dullest who 
abounded everywhere. He could not rise alone while he 
essayed to carry so many others who were falling. The sur- 
face of the universal society he encountered presented natural 
inequalities, aggravated by harsh and stubborn customs of 
ignorance and superstition, of pride and power. From 
this low malarial general level he undertook a flight which 
visionaries and enthusiasts in later times have lauded as the 
ideal of humanity. It would have dispensed justice and com- 
passion, so they believe, alike for the evil and for the good. 
Yet it is the verdict of history that Hildebrand’s system, 
when well weighed in the balance, is found wanting. Its 
roseate glow faded with the light of common day. Hidden 
beneath its dreamy splendors and actual achievements were 
untold corruptions and abuses which it could not exterminate. 
Its Pope Angelico is as imaginary as Tennyson’s King 
Arthur or Plato’s ideal Republic. Its very intensity, which 
gives one pause, proved its impossibility; its partial realiza- 
tion was a mixed benefit; its triumph would have been the 
death knell of liberty. 

But for these fatalities we cannot justly blame Hildebrand. 
From the Nebo of his bold speculations, he surveyed a fu- 
ture which appeared to him overflowing with milk and honey. 
Behind him were the dreary sands and the sterile wastes of 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 219 


misspent ages; the hopeless, bloodstained struggles of mon- 
archs and mobs; and the slow sure stagnation of social death. 
Who does not share his throb of spiritual delight as, from his 
lonely elevation, he descried a new world in which righteous- 
ness would dwell? In that perfect society, the lion and the 
lamb should lie down together; fraud and wrong should give 
way to truth and peace. There the sword of the Lord and 
of His first Apostle should put to flight the hosts of darkness: 
All this the great Pontiff saw or thought he saw. What he 
did not see was that with such observation the coming of the 
Kingdom was not to be ascertained. Like the Puritans, 
many of whom so often have too hastily condemned him, he 
attempted the impossible. They attempted it on the more 
democratic lines of Geneva, he, by the autocracy of one su- 
preme Pontificate. Both failed, but theirs were the splendid 
failures that have ennobled and enriched humanity. The 
prophet, priest and statesman, whom Voltaire characteristi- 
cally called a fool, and Condorcet a knave, but whom Gib- 
bon with justice recognized as a second Athanasius, was one 
of the rare dreamers who have left their impress on the his- 
tory of succeeding ages. We may allow with Gregorovius 
that if his policies could have been carried out in the purity 
and breadth of their creator’s intention, they would have 
constituted “almost the highest earthly form in which man- 
kind could have seen the expansion of its unity and har- 
mony.” Whatever his shortcomings, and judgment on the 
great Gregory VII perhaps can never be unanimous, this 
much his bitterest enemies must concede: he demonstrated 
that ideas are more powerful than the sword, and that the 
mailed fist is impotent against spiritual convictions. 


Vil 


These ideas and convictions held good for two hundred 
years after his death, during which period the Church more 
and more became a State within the political State, with its 


220 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


own inquisitors, police powers and international emissaries. 
The friars and other regulars who travelled the length and 
breadth of Christendom were devoted to the Holy See, whose 
Pope had deposed Henry IV at Canossa, and compelled him 
to wait three days in the snow before granting him absolu- 
tion for his contumacy. Freed from secular service to the 
State, strictly clerical interests were naturally attached to the 
Papacy. The bishops and their parochial clergy who showed 
some traces of national feeling were denounced by thousands 
of friars in every land, who swore by the Pontiff at Rome. 
They and their superiors had yet to learn in the costly school 
of experience that the influence of the Church was to be exer- 
cised, not as a governing body with frequent resort to physi- 
cal compulsion, but as a holy brotherhood, after the fashion 
of the Apostolic Church, and of the Medieval St. Francis. 
The mistake which clericalism imherited from Hildebrand: 
“of substituting the Jewish ideal of righteousness by means 
of government, for the Christian ideal of government by 
means of righteousness,” 7! resulted in the battlings between 
Popes and Emperors during successive generations. Both 
Church and Empire grasped for power; each was jealous 
of the other; each viewed their mutual functions with sus- 
picion and undermined each other’s moral authority, in 
pathetic forgetfulness that their service for mankind was 
complementary and not contradictory. 

The twelfth century witnessed the rise of the City Repub- 
lics of Italy, which the reigning House of Hohenstaufen en- 
deavored to suppress. The instinctive enmity between the 
Latin and the Teuton blazed out in the resistance of these 
independent municipalities to the aggressions of Frederic 
Barbarossa. ‘Their cause was espoused by the Papacy, but 
that of the Empire also found supporters in Italy. The two 
parties, known as the Guelf and the Ghibelline, supported the 
divine authority of their respective leaders, the Guelf assert- 
ing that God had set Pope over Emperor, and the Ghibelline 

21 A. Robertson: ‘‘ Regnum Dei,” p. 368. _ 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 221 


maintaining the opposite. The papal faction had a formid- 
able intellectual array, but it lacked the material means to 
enforce its plea. The Empire though strong in military re- 
sources, was weakened by internal quarrels, and some of its 
temporal princes were also ecclesiastics who relished the 
height of the papal supremacy. This had reached a pinnacle 
of solitary state upon which the Pontiffs were set to “pluck 
up and to plant.’”’ Monarchs were their vassals, their inter- 
dicts paralyzed nations, and the threat of excommunication 
brought the haughtiest rulers of Europe to their knees. 
Louis IX of France, who afterward became a canonized 
saint, and that great prelate, Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, 
whose learning and piety were the admiration of his country- 
men, remonstrated in vain against the exorbitant demands of 
the Holy See. The German Cesars equalled it in arrogance, 
and almost exceeded the Pontiffs in their ambition to exalt 
their monarchical estate. It was an open race for world 
dominion led by two unyielding personalties, Hadrian IV 
and Frederic I.22 Hadrian was the only Englishman who 
ever sat on the papal throne, where he revealed a more liberal 
spirit than any other occupant of that exalted station, but 
damaged it by granting Ireland to Henry II. His tempera- 
ment and traditions fostered the democratic tendency in the 
Medizval Church to recognize ability wherever found, and 
to bestow its offices according to merit. However wide 
were the departures from these ideals, they survived and reas- 
serted themselves. Dean Church states in his volume, the 
“Beginning of the Middle Ages,” that the Church was the 
repository of nearly all that was praiseworthy, the conserva- 
tor of letters and learning, of the human virtues and of the 
best tendencies of the age. The Empire was characterized by 
a radically opposite spirit, and proceeded to extremes which 
enraged the Italian people, specifically those of the Northern 
provinces. Conscious of the ancient glory of their civiliza- 


22 Cf. F. J. Foakes Jackson: ‘‘ An Introduction to the History of Chris- 
tianity, A. D. 590-1314,” p. 247 ff. 


222 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


tion, and of its rapid development at this time, the Romans 
resented the lordly insolence of the Emperor Frederic I on 
the occasion of his coronation, June 18, 1155. They closed 
the gates of their city against him, and allowed him no suf- 
ferance beyond the Leonine City. He was crowned at St. 
Peter’s, but he was not permitted to visit the Lateran Bas- 
ilica, 

While Guelf and Ghibelline quarreled and fought, other 
interests foreign to their intentions were aroused. Lord 
Acton pertinently observes that it is idle to look for the spark 
of freedom in flint and steel. It arose out of their violent 
contact. The object of both parties was an unqualified 
supremacy. The rulers were absolutists to a man. But 
they forsook their theory under necessity, and indirectly 
encouraged popular control by seeking the aid of those City 
Republics which were its nurseries. The commonalty, which 
was really everything yet seemingly nothing in the great de- 
bate, was awakened by its tumult. The people at large, who 
far outnumbered princes, prelates, monks, scholars, philoso- 
phers and retainers of courts and camps, supplied the flesh 
and blood and the taxes exacted by these endless conflicts. 
They did those daily tasks without the doing of which civili- 
zation would have faltered. Yet they had no voice in the 
administration of Church or Empire, nor in the pacification 
of affairs which meant life or death to them. Although legis- 
lation was ostensibly enacted in their behalf, and religious, 
academic or political theories had to be verified in their ex- 
perience, there were no very apparent relations between 
them and their governors and guides. Nevertheless, democ- 
racy had its obscure genesis at this particular juncture, as 
an untoward result of the appeals which Church and Empire 
alike made to the people. The same pontifical policy by 
which Hildebrand established the independence of the Pap- 
acy, and thus engendered the conflict between it and the 
political power, unwittingly conceded the sovereignty of the 
people. The Papalists argued that since the Emperor de- 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 223 


rived his authority from the nation, it could always take 
back what it had given. The Imperialists replied that no- 
body, not even the Pope himself, could deprive the Emperor 
of that which the nation had bestowed on him. It was there- 
fore a valid conclusion that the people were the arbiters of 
the controversy. When Hadrian IV and Alexander III in- 
cited the Italian City-States to rebel against Frederic I, 
because rebellion advanced their schemes, they ignored the 
possibility of a similar revolt against the temporal powers of 
the Holy See. In the plottings and counter-plottings of 
Popes and Emperors we may trace the growth of a third es- 
tate. While it emerged out of the surrounding chaos none 
was aware of its latent might; none seems to have suspected 
that a greater social force than the Papacy or the Empire 
had at last appeared. 

In summary, it may be said that the Christian Ecclesia had 
to combine with the Latin and German Empires in order to 
exorcise the spirit of ageless paganism which possessed soci- 
ety. Christianity had been superimposed upon that pagan- 
ism, and taught principles and beliefs incompatible with 
former views of life and conduct. The antique cults and prac- 
tices formed the soil from which many personal and social 
habits grew. Their dross and gold were deeply related to an- 
cestral instincts which could not be speedily exterminated. 
Hence the conviction of Church and State that their union 
was essential to that extermination created the despotism of 
the Eastern Church, and also, in the sequence, the liberal- 
izing policies of the Western Church.”* The theologians and 
ecclesiastics who could not imagine Christianity flourishing 
beyond the confines of the Empire favored its jurisdiction, 
and insisted that the Church was in the State. But as hosts 
of pagan invaders, who in religious matters were usually led 
by their rulers, surrendered to the Cross, the outlook changed, 
and Pontiffs and bishops came to believe that the State was 
in the Church. Lord Acton observes that the process in- 

28 Cf. Henry Osborn Taylor: ‘‘ The Medizval Mind,” Vol. I. p. 8 ff. 


224 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


duced the Church, which in earliest times addressed itself to 
the masses and relied upon the principle of liberty, to throw 
its mighty influence into the scale of authority. She sup- 
plied the wherewithal for the establishment of new and nom- 
inally Christian States which had been redeemed from bar- 
barism. She taught the princes of converted pagan tribes 
the rudiments of government, and gave their peoples what 
little knowledge they acquired. It is not surprising that these 
princes and peoples felt a strong attachment to clerics whose 
minds were the sole sources of national light and better- 
ment, or that the Church was made exempt from taxation, 
from civil jurisdiction and from political interference. But 
as the peoples advanced in self-consciousness and formed 
their national integrity in the hereditary succession of the 
Crown, Church and State drew apart, and presently drifted 
into open antagonism. ‘To the conflict which ensued for 
four hundred years, civil freedom owes its beginnings. ‘‘If,”’ 
says Lord Acton, ‘‘the Church had continued to buttress the 
thrones of kings whom it anointed, or if the struggle had ter- 
minated speedily in an undivided victory, all Europe would 
have sunk down undera Byzantine or Muscovite despotism.”’ 74 

Out of the seeming wreckage of these centuries that have 
passed beneath our rapid review arose the doctrine abhorred 
by its principal contestants on both sides. The divine right 
of Popes and Emperors was at last countered by the divine 
right of the People to set up and pull down princes. Once 
it reached broader grounds and obtained the sanctions of re- 
ligion, it spread apace until it was sturdy enough to defy 
Church and king. The disparagement of civil authority by 
ecclesiastics who detected its manifold infirmities returned 
to vex spiritual authority. Even in Hildebrand’s time, he 
and his opponents were driven to acknowledge the embry- 
onic democracy to which two centuries later both Guelf and 
Ghibelline alike appealed for approval. We shall see in 
the next lecture that the sentiments of the most celebrated 

24 ** History of Freedom,” p. 35. 


THE CHRISTIAN ECCLESIA IN THE TWO EMPIRES 225 


Guelfic writer were destined to go far. St. Thomas averred 
that a king who is unfaithful to his duty forfeits his claim to 
obedience. “It is not rebellion to depose him, for he himself 
is a rebel whom the nation has a right to pull down. But it is 
better to abridge his power that he may be unable to abuse it. 
For this purpose the whole nation ought to have a share in 
governing itself.”’ This language, which sounds appropriate 
for a modern revolutionist, was enforced by the further dec- 
laration of St. Thomas that “all political authority is derived 
from popular suffrage, and all laws must be made by the 
people or their representatives. There is no security for 
us so long as we depend on the will of another man.” It is 
worth while to observe that he penned these illuminating 
opinions at the very moment when Simon de Montfort sum- 
moned the English Commons. The politics of this Scholastic 
and Neopolitan Friar were the advance guard of the present 
constitutionalism which, after its world-wide acceptance by 
civilized States, is now being subjected to criticism and accu- 
sation. 


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SEVENTH LECTURE 
THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIZ:VAL IMPERIALISM 


“Ts it so small a thing 

To have enjoy’d the sun, 

To have lived light in the spring, 

To have loved, to have thought, to have done; 

To have advanced true friend, and beat down baffling foes-— 


That we must feign a bliss 

Of doubtful future date, 

And, while we dream on this, 

Lose all our present state, 

And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose? ”’ 
MatrrHuEew ARrNoLp: Empedocles on Etna. 


“‘Before the fear of ridicule and-the touch of reality, the illusions of 
youth pass away, and with them goes all intellectual courage. We 
have no longer the hardihood, we have scarcely the wish, to form our 
own creed, to think our own thoughts, to act upon our own beliefs; we 
try to be sensible, and we end in being ordinary; we fear to be eccen- 
tric, and we end in being commonplace.” 

Wa tter BaGeuort: Collected Works 
Vol. III. p. 128. 


SEVENTH LECTURE 
THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 


The attractiveness of universal rule — Boniface VIII and his Bull 
“Unam Sanctam’’ — The ruin of the Papal supremacy — The Avi- 
gnon schism — Pierre DuBois and French overlordship — Augustine 
Trionfo— The soul of the Middle Ages— The paradoxes of the 
period — The range and character of Medieval interests — The scholas- 
tic philosophy and its exponents — Augustinian and classical influences 
— The monastic orders, Innocent III, and St. Francis of Assisi —The 
losses and gains of Monasticism — Toleration known but persecution 
chosen by Church and Empire — Their renewed wars for supremacy — 
The triumph of Innocent IV — Dante, Marsiglio and Wyclif — The 
substance of ‘‘De Monarchia,” ‘‘Defensor Pacis,’”’ ‘‘De Ecclesia,’ and 
‘De Officio Regis ’” — The summons to the modern world. 


Ir was doubtless exceedingly attractive to many Christians 
of Medizvalism that there should be but one world govern- 
ance, so long as it was that of Christ. And if a theocracy 
were only possible which enabled His two vicegerents, as 
Pope and Emperor, to insure the well-being of mankind, few 
would have questioned its right to rule. The conflict be- 
tween these vicegerents did not arise from the principles in- 
volved in their sovereignty, but from the application of the 
principles. The Holy Roman Empire, moreover, did not 
actually expire after the downfall of the Hohenstaufen 
dynasty. It had a name, and lived on for six hundred years 
more till it became an antiquarian relic scarcely more ven- 
erable than ridiculous, which Voltaire characterized in its 
last phase, as ‘neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.”’ 
Its tenure was prolonged, in part, by the belief that it was an 
instrument of the Divine Order, but chiefly by its connection 
with the German principalities.! 

1Cf. Viscount Bryce: ‘‘ The Holy Roman Empire,”’ Ch. XIII. 
229 


230 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


The rejoicings of the Holy See over the ruin of the Imperial 
House were destined to be short lived. France and England 
became increasingly restive; and, in Philip the Fair of the 
former Kingdom, Pope Boniface VIII? faced a decided 
supporter of Gallican clericalism, who summoned the States 
General to nationalize the French Church by subordinating 
it to the Crown. Philip’s best weapon was the law, not the 
sword. Expert legal authorities like Pierre Flotte; and Guil- 
laume de Nogaret, who was “learned, astute, and daring 
beyond the thoughts of others,” stood at Philip’s right hand. 
His kingdom was no longer the loose confederation of duchies 
and provinces of Hildebrand’s day, always jealous of each 
other, often at war, and owning a merely nominal obedience 
to the monarch in Paris, but a far more centralized and self- 
conscious State. Normandy, which was long an alien prov- 
ince on the northern flank, had finally been detached from 
England. In the South, the dangers that might have arisen 
from the independence of Toulouse had been ended by the 
Albigensian wars. The enthusiasm of its citizens for the polit- 
ical entity of France, first and always, was aroused by their 
sanguine speculations about her future. The hour had come 
in which she should organize in better forms the strength and 
splendor that once had belonged to the now dying Empire. 
France was vaguely related to that Empire; her fair provinces 
of Burgundy, Besancon and Lyons were still its fiefs. But 
her leading spirits were practically severed from it, and busily 
engaged in saluting the rising sun of Nationalism. To this we 
shall return later. 

The haughty decrees of the Holy See gave France the 
opening she desired. The Papal Bull “Unam Sanctam,” 
published on November 18, 1302, reasserted the Gregorian 


2 Benedetto Gaetani, who took on the pontifical throne the name of Boni- 
face VIII, was a nephew through his mother of Pope Alexander IV. He dis- 
tinguished himself as a student at Paris, especially in law; had a brilliant 
mind, gracious and prepossessing manners, and a warm admiration for the 
religions of antiquity. He was learned, wise, subtle, but worldly and rich. 
He was seventy-seven years old when he became Pope. He was the master 
of a faultless Latin style. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIZVAL IMPERIALISM 231 


idea of world-dominion for the Pontificate. In the words of 
this document: ‘‘there is now only one head, not two heads, 
as if it were a monster.”’ The two swords that St. Peter 
offered to Christ, and which hitherto had been assigned re- 
spectively to the imperial and papal jurisdictions, were claimed 
by Boniface as the exclusive possession of the Church. He 
argued that St. Peter was commanded to put up the sword 
in the sheath, that is, within the keeping of the Church. 
The Bull ended with an assertion echoing the sentiments of 
Aquinas, “that it is altogether necessary to salvation for 
every human being to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” 
Its immediate outcome was the ruin of papal supremacy. 
Philip retaliated by dispatching Nogaret to Italy to kidnap 
the Pope and take him to Lyons. The attempt failed, but 
the aged and broken Boniface died within a fortnight, and 
his successor, Benedict XI, reigned but a few months. The 
Holy See was now forcibly transferred to Avignon, where it 
became to all intents and purposes a fief of the French mon- 
archy. \ The Pontiff, Bertrand de Gouth, who had been 
Archbishop of Bordeaux, and as such, a subject of the Eng- 
lish monarch, was yet Philip’s creature, elected at his bid- 
dance, and crowned as Clement V at Lyons. For a short 
time Europe seemed to pass under French domination, and 
its partisans urged that the French king should be appointed 
to receive the homage of his fellow monarchs who held to the 
Pope, the King of England included. There is no need to en- 
large upon the further consequence of these outrageous 
measures. The seventy years of ‘Babylonish Captivity” at 
Avignon were the beginning of a new chapter in the relation 
of Church and State, and of the end of the Papacy’s spiritual 
leadership of Western Europe.? The Christian nations were 
rent asunder, deprived of their court of last resort, and prece- 
dents made for the sixteenth century revolt. 

France used plausible pretexts to assume the older forms 


3Cf. Henry Osborn Taylor: ‘‘ Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth 
Century,” Vol. I. p. 75, 


232 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


of imperial supremacy, with herself as its nucleus, and the 
Papacy as a French dependency. Her abuse of an authority 
to which she was not entitled and had never been accustomed 
was to be anticipated. The Papal Court at Avignon became 
a “forge of lies and a sink of iniquity.” The Order of the 
Knights Templar, founded in 1118, in connection with the 
Crusades, and prominent as a redoubtable but corrupt agency 
of the Papacy, was condemned by the Bull “‘ Vox in Excelso,” 
dated April 3, 1312; and on March 18, 1314, its Grand Master, 
Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake. As he stood in 
the flames which cast their crimson glare over the surround- 
ing buildings of the Isle de la Cite and across the waters of 
the Seine, in a loud voice he summoned Pope Clement V and 
Philip to meet him at the bar of God. Within forty days 
Clement obeyed the call, and Philip within the year. The 
king who died at Fontainebleau on the 29th of November 
1314, was an able ruler who advanced nearly every interest 
of France, but as a man, he was unscrupulous and treacher- 
ous. He, more than any other, more even than Luther or Cal- 
vin, gave to papal supremacy its fatal wound. Nor was the 
disgrace it had inflicted upon the Hohenstaufens forgotten 
or forgiven in Germany, where it had its sequel two hundred 
years later. 

While Europe lay in the shadow of French overlordship, 
its chauvinists were vocal about the new nationalism. 
Pierre DuBois,’ a lawyer of Normandy, published in 1309 a 
well-written and cogent treatise which should be mentioned. 
The author, a firm adherent of that advanced thinker, Siger 
de Brabant, was by no means an obscurantist, but rather a 
medieval progressive who pronounced against the usurpa- 
tions of ecclesiastical tyranny. DuBois pleaded for universal 
peace; for a Court of Appeals for Christendom; for the deliv- 
erance of the Holy Land from the Moslem; for the strong 
monarchy of competent princes, who should not be at the 


4 The best information about DuBois is found in ‘‘ Owen’s College His- 
torical Essays,’’ Ch. VI. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 2338 


bidding of rebellious vassals, but free to maintain the welfare 
of their subjects. Educational reforms and the need of grad- 
uated schools were also stressed by him. What could be bet- 
ter for Europe, he urged, in terms usually characteristic of 
extreme patriotism, than its subjection to the French mon- 
archy? ‘‘Rome, Tuscany, the coasts and mountains, Sicily, 
England, Aragon and all other countries” that had formed 
Constantine’s Empire and the patrimony of the Papacy, 
should be handed over to the French king. The Pope should 
be adequately pensioned, and the ancient rule supplanted by 
that of France. Such in brief, were the proposals of .this Gal- 
lican lawyer. But his dreams and those of his countrymen 
were ended by the disastrous Hundred Years War. The close 
of the fourteenth century found the Holy See in the throes 
of the Great Schism. The Holy Roman Empire was equally 
bereft of its former power, and France no longer capable, if 
she had ever been, of world dominion. The rise of various 
nations, each determined to live as it pleased, was the pre- 
vailing feature of the time. 

The comparative demolition of the papal claims provoked 
vigorous remonstrances from their apologists, in whom Hil- 
debrand’s influence was still paramount. The best known of 
these, Augustine Trionfo,wrote a tractate on papal privileges 
that raised them to the highest pitch.? Spiritual and tem- 
poral rule belonged exclusively to the successors of St. Peter. 
Even were the Pope a wicked man, his reign was none the less 
of God, and neither Emperors nor laymen had any rights so 
far as he was concerned. His power far exceeded that of 
temporal princes; his court was the august tribunal of the 
world. The existence of secular states was only justified by 
the fact that spiritual priesthood presided over them. In 
ways of which these statements are typical, Trionfo ex- 
pounded the doctrine of Hildebrand in his letter to Bishop 
Hermann of Metz, that “civil power was the invention of 


5 For Trionfo, the reader is referred to R. L. Poole: ‘ Illustrations of the 
History of Mediwval Thought,’’ p. 253 ff. 


234 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


worldly men, ignorant of God, and prompted by the devil.” 
Yet such ultramontanism was not altogether wanting in con- 
cessions to what would now be termed democracy. Provided 
the State was willing to recognize the lordship of the Church, 
she, in turn, was willing to yield a great deal to popular sen- 
timent. The clericalism of that age would have utterly 
denied the divine right of kings, a Reformation doctrine which 
appeared later as counterpart to the claim of the Papacy 
to the power of deposition. Hildebrand himself had sanc- 
tioned the theory of Manegold, a priest of Lautenbach in 
Alsace, that monarchy is not a name of nature but a title of 
office; and, therefore, that as soon as the monarch acted the 
tyrant he was liable to deposition. ‘If anyone should be en- 
gaged for a fair wage to tend swine,” said this wholesome 
priest, “and he found means not to tend but to steal them, 
would not one remove him from his charge?” For St. 
Thomas, who has appeared in these lectures and will do so 
again, the powers that be were ordained of God, with the 
reservation that God acted through the Church. He sought 
to check the overweening demands of royalty by advocating 
an elective rather than a hereditary monarchy. Indeed, the 
ablest of the Scholastics would not concede the title of prince 
to those who did not govern according to virtue and eternal 
right. His chief contribution to the conception of Church and 
State was a well-reasoned discourse in which he contended 
that the State was not the outcome of human transgressions, 
but of the social instincts native to human beings. With 
this argument as his premise, he arrived at political conclu- 
sions in keeping with the dignity of his mind and the no- 
bility of his disposition. The best modern theories of popular 
sovereignty have little of value to add to the substance of St. 
Thomas’ teachings, and his works can always be consulted 
by present day thinkers with real advantage. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 285 


{ha 


The thirteenth century, which contained the brilliancy, 
variety, beauty, the very soul of the medizval world, came 
to its close in the thirty-fourth year of Dante’s life. He was 
by far its foremost personalty; the citizen who placed his 
civic passion at the disposal of the Empire; the poet who 
vividly depicted the wisdom and the folly of the Catholic 
and Feudal Estates of the Middle Ages; the prophet be- 
tween whose lines of homage for the past one reads its death 
sentence. It was a dubious because it was a transitional 
period. The old order changed, gave place to the new, and 
its sublimest hymn, ‘‘Dies Ire,’ was in some respects the 
Florentine seer’s requiem over the end of a luminous day. 
His contemporaries eagerly desired either what had been or 
should be; few of them were of the present, many were of the 
past or for the future. The masters of knowledge, as well as 
the mediocre but ambitious rulers who endangered their own 
interests, looked after or before, and longed for what was not. 
It was the misused trial time of Europe and Christianity. 
Statesmen ande cclesiastics, scholars and humanists, war- 
riors and fanatics, great ladies and courtiers, appeared in the 
phantasmagoria of its life. Strong personalities emerged, 
typical of the proud spirit of the era, but too many forgot 
that they who would lead their age must first learn its duties. 
In their struggles for aggrandizement, Popes and Emperors 
mutually destroyed one another. The gradual amendment 
of society, the advance of moral ideas, their maintenance 
against material forces, the prevalence of rational persuasion 
over military violence, lost headway with the close of the 
thirteenth century. Their rapid decline after this date ex- 
cites regret even at our remote hour. Yet the rise and fall of 
the public welfare confirms Lord Acton’s statement that his- 
tory’s course is “our deliverer not only from the undue signif- 
icance of other times, but from the undue influence of our 
own, from the tyranny of environment and the pressure of the 


236 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


air we breathe.’ ® It exposes ancient errors and crimes that 
persistently recur; it cultivates considerate discretion, and 
the capacity for the wise management of public affairs; it 
shows that the chief values of any period are frequently found 
in its fluctuations. 

Assuredly the Medieval period was filled with bewildering 
paradoxes and contradictions. The largest ideas and the 
pettiest conceits consorted in many of the leading characters. 
They were given to fine gestures which they were often at a 
loss to sustain. Its political and religious federalism was dis- 
solved by internal treasons, and the disunion which ensued 
produced both good and evil. The good has been exagger- 
ated and its gains unduly magnified; yet one cannot avoid the 
opinion that they far exceed the losses. The nature and range 
of its intellectual pursuits were largely determined by the 
literature of antiquity. The core of its theology was directly 
connected with the hopes and fears of Judgment Day. Its 
highly conjectural eschatology bestrode nearly every con- 
ception of life here and hereafter. Its forms of thought were 
those of Aristotle. Its religious aspirations, if they had but 
few prophets who gave them wings, were never separated 
from men and women in whom the eternities dwelt. A cease- 
less flood of allegorical and symbolic interpretations in- 
creased the power of the Church over the people. Saints, 
doctors and dreamers lived in the mystical realm, and lav- 
ished their ingenuities on its fancies. * Nearly everything 
pertaining to life and death was within the compass of the 
religious medieval mind. * It knew no half-way measures: 
all souls were either near to Heaven itself or on the verge of 
an abyss of woe. They had fellowship with God, with Christ, 
with the Blessed Virgin, with the saints and angels in glory 
everlasting. But the devil and his legions were also vivid to 
them as ever present and ominous agents of their undoing. 
The visions of women like Hildegard of Bingen represented 
generally received beliefs and dogmas, which sprang from the 

6 ** Lectures on Modern History ,” p. 33. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAZVAL IMPERIALISM 237 


intellect rather than the heart of Mediazvalism. Its trances, 
ecstasies, excursions into the invisible, and occult revelations 
of trivial details were the reactions of an imagination sus- 
ceptible to common beliefs. The senses subserved these 
ghostly experiences, and often gave them an uncouth realism. 
Odorous winds from Paradise, horrible stenches from Per- 
dition, jubilations of the redeemed, agonizings of the damned, 
took on the semblance of physical perceptions. The Mediz- 
valists cannot be charged, as we are, with believing too little; 
but though they often believed too much, and made pros- 
trated emotionalism do duty for faith, they went to consider- 
able pains to amplify what they believed, and to make it ex- 
press the popular mind.’ 

The Universities were dominated by the Scholastics whose 
philosophy gave coherence to religious sentiment, to the 
manners and morals of the people, and to their ways of think- 
ing. This philosophy was expounded, among others, by St. 
Bonaventura, by Albertus Magnus, by his pupil St. Thomas, 
and by Roger Bacon. St. Bonaventura related Scholasticism 
to the ideas of the twelfth century; Albertus Magnus occu- 
pied an intermediate position; St. Thomas is still the guide 
and mentor of the Roman Catholic Church. From his death 
in 1274 he became supreme in Christian Theology until the 
rise of modern thought. AIl acknowledged St. Augustine as 
their theological master, and shared the universal belief that 
the Bible was an infallible Book, the interpretation of which 
was established by the authorized tradition of the Church. 
Every other branch of knowledge was subordinated to theol- 
ogy as the queen of the sciences. 

In some respects Bacon was the most fascinating thinker 
of Medizvalism. There was no lack of monotony in his ca- 
reer. His premonitions of later and organized learning en- 
abled him to detect some truths he did not fully apprehend, 
and overshadowed some theological presuppositions he never 
disavowed. The separation between what he sincerely felt 

7 Cf. Henry Osborn Taylor: ‘‘ The Medizval Mind,’’ Vol. I. p. 458 ff. 


238 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


and what he dimly foresaw, caused his life to be an intellectual 
tragedy. He was always suspect, always under surveillance, 
often hindered by Pontiffs and bishops, obnoxious to his own 
order of the Franciscans. The output of his amazing indus- 
try increases our regard for a much misunderstood scholar, 
whose greatness was not mentioned until long after his be- 
clouded hour had passed. Once dead, he seemed to be buried 
forever, and has only been unearthed in our time from the 
neglect and obloquy heaped upon his memory. The pre- 
vailing metaphysic received its consummate treatment, how- 
ever, from St. Thomas, whose breadth of intellect and sym- 
pathy was governed by his sense of responsibility to God and 
man. The relations between all things in heaven and earth 
were interpreted by him in what, for his age, was a thoroughly 
satisfactory system of religious philosophy. 

Duns Scotus has been described as the pinnacle set upon 
this system. Probably his was its most acute mind, with a 
critical sharpness all too likely to leave opposing opinions 
ragged and torn. He could analyze better than he could 
synthesize, and he would not have been what he was had he 
not lived after St. Thomas. But the main feature of Duns 
Scotus’ writings is their destructive criticism. He practically 
annihilated reasonableness and based everything upon the un- 
related Will of God. Faith, for him, was a leap into the dark. 
By his hostility toward its rational side he undermined 
Scholasticism, and paved the way for the Renaissance, and 
for the new outlook of Descartes. It was not a far ery from 
Duns Scotus and his Realism, which ascribed an actual ob- 
jective existence to general ideas, to the Nominalism or Con- 
ceptualism of William of Ockham, which denied that Realism. 
In Ockham’s denial, and in the substitute theories which 
he propounded, the signs of Scholasticism’s decay can be dis- 
cerned. His work had upon it those autumnal tints which 
presaged the approaching winter. The philosophy that had 
for centuries upheld the Medizval Order and codrdinated its 
character and rule, was at last fading away. Its labyrinthine 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIZVAL IMPERIALISM 239 


windings offer one an intriguing theme that takes us too far 
afield from the purpose of these lectures. But occasional 
references to its main ideas can hardly be avoided in any intel- 
ligent treatment of the Middle Ages. Nor should its inter- 
relations with very different and subsequent systems of 
thought be ignored by present day scholarship. It imparted 
numerous spiritual meanings of life and pressed home upon 
men the consciousness of their common needs and their com- 
mon civilization. Its exponents determined the doctrines of 
Church and State, and in doing this, they followed an un- 
relaxing regimen which has not been surpassed by , ancient 
or modern thinkers. Their skill in argumentation and scrupu- 
lously logical processes were a first rate intellectual drill 
which left its impress upon the mentality of after ages. It 
cleared the way for the careful precision required by the de- 
ductive method, and taught those who employed it the need 
of correct observation and of patience in experiment. From 
this viewpoint the Scholastics may be regarded as the pio- 
neers of the natural sciences that have since revolutionized 
the material world. 

The monastic orders to which they usually belonged were 
another falling buttress of Medisvalism. These also deserve 
a fullness of investigation which can only be made by their 
separate consideration. We have to be content here with 
scanty references to an institution which profoundly influ- 
enced the doctrine and polity of the Church for nearly a 
thousand years. The regular clergy, as the monks were 
called, because they lived according to a predetermined rule, 
have been accused of well-nigh all crimes and vices. But in 
their prime they imbued with human elements the theology 
handed down from the Fathers, and emotionalized its dry 
and musty articles to good effect. The heart of the living 
Christ resumed its beating of compassion for mankind in the 
original recluses and friars. What human beings love or hate 
was attached to its highest objectives by the purest monastic 
devotion. I shall reiterate nothing concerning the numerous 


240 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


advantages which the system conferred upon city slums and 
rural solitudes. It suffices to say that Monasticism enlarged 
men’s capacity forimmortality by instructing them in the care 
of theirsouls as wellas their bodies. The religious motives and 
habits generated in the earlier monasteries became a model 
of life for millions, and exemplary recluses frequently fulfilled 
them so admirably as to belie man’s reputation for frailty.® 

The art of the Middle Ages, their manuscript libraries and 
ecclesiastical architecture, have so plainly told the monastic 
story at its height that it is perhaps better read in Fra Angel- 
ico’s paintings or St. Alban’s stately abbey, than even from 
the printed page. Yet we should not forget the devotional 
literature of the cloister, which contains numerous examples 
of Christian excellence and exhortations to Christian holiness. 
In an age when men and women were notoriously buoyant 
sinners or sorely stricken penitents, they were apt to look 
upon the monk as the symmetrical saint. Lusts that were 
often uncontrolled by any semblance of reason ceased at the 
gateway of the monastery. Within its grateful refuge every- 
thing was tranquil on the surface, and wearied souls fled to its 
shelter from an arid and exhausting world. There tempta- 
tions which had hitherto given them no respite were to be 
conquered. But their torments could not always be subdued; 
and as the centuries came and went, human nature reasserted 
itself, and dragged down Monasticism to a naturalistic level. 
Chastity, poverty and obedience did not surrender without 
a hard fight, and frequently a victorious one. Yet once the 
degeneration began it was hastened by the absence in mon- 
astic life of the outlets or restraints of normal life. The pious 
introspection which had become morbid, the service which 
had been transferred from others to self, were unchecked by 
that intercourse with secular society which necessitates a 
degree of altruism. Consequently the records of Monasti- 


8 Cf. Henry Osborn Taylor: ‘‘ The Medieval Mind,’’ Vol. I. p. 357 ff. 
Also G. G. Coulton: ‘‘ Five Centuries of Religion ,’’ Vol. I. Ch. I on ‘‘ The 
Significance of Monasticism.”’ 

9Cf. Peter Taylor Forsyth: ‘‘ Christ on Parnassus,’’ pp. 98-191. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIA'VAL IMPERIALISM 241 


cism are those of repeated reforms or renewals. Its leaders 
nearly always appear as pleaders for the path which wayward 
regulars had forsaken. Communal virtues and aims were 
praised ; the social instincts were invoked in behalf of a stricter 
observance of the monastic rule. Those who instituted new 
Orders with a severer discipline were often quick to resent 
the control of the higher clergy. Several of their movements 
began, like that of Wesley in the eighteenth century, as more 
or less unconscious protests against ossified parochial systems; 
and like him, the monasteries had to encounter the resistance 
of their mitered antagonists. 


Ill 


It was characteristic of Innocent III, perhaps the greatest 
of the Pontiffs, that he rose above this prejudice when he 
commissioned the holiest and most famous friar of Medizeval- 
ism. This Pope’s reception of St. Francis was in keeping 
with nearly all we know of both men. Frederic Harrison 
declares that those who would understand the Middle Ages 
must study the lengthy and crowded Pontificate of Inno- 
cent. In commanding genius, in greatness of nature, in 
audacity of design, he has few rivals in the fourteen centuries 
of Roman Pontiffs, and few superiors in any age on any throne 
in the world. ‘His eighteen years of rule, from 1198 to 1216, 
were one long effort, for the moment successful, and in 
part deserving success, to enforce on the kings and peoples 
of Europe a higher morality, respect for the spiritual mis- 
sion of the Church, and a sense of their common civili- 
zation.”’ 1? Not even Hildebrand vied with Innocent as a 
discerner and ruler of the souls of men. It was this gift of 
reading and exploring the hidden springs of human con- 
duct which enabled him to give to his office its maximum 
development. He never used it to better purpose than when 
with an eagle eye he saw, beneath the unpromising exterior of 

10 Frederic Harrison: ‘‘ The Meaning of History,”’ p. 157 ff. 


242 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


his youthful suppliant, a ray of hope for the spiritualities of 
his world-domain. Accordingly, Innocent sent St. Francis 
forth after the manner in which our Lord had dispatched His 
disciples; and the adventure was justified by the beatific 
splendor which he shed upon it. Of all regulars of the period 
he has impressed himself most deeply and lastingly upon 
Christendom, even exceeding in this respect St. Bernard of 
Clairvaux. The title bestowed on him, ‘“‘the grand climac- 
teric of Medieval Faith,’ well became a personal sanctity 
which rose above its description. 

He assembled his followers, pledged them to the vows of 
his Fraternity, and journeyed with them throughout Europe, 
preaching the Evangel of Divine Love and human redemp- 
tion. His message was not embarrassed by the arduous 
circumstances that confronted it. The everlasting and the 
universal dwelt in him, and radiated from him and his utter- 
ances to all ranks and conditions. He was a living testimony 
to the truth that “charity never faileth.”” Without marked 
intellectual gifts, averse to scholarly pursuits, as simple in 
mind as he was single in heart, St. Francis is reverenced 
as one of the noblest embodiments of Christian consecra- 
tion since the Apostolic age. Although nothing appealed to 
his mentality alone, and whatever was unsuited to his way of 
life repelled rather than attracted him, he solved the prob- 
lem for which the learned and the wise of this world have sel- 
dom, if ever, found a solution, by becoming a dedicated spirit, 
overflowing with grace and benediction. For him all the vir- 
tues were sacrosanct, and their acquirement lay in imitating 
his Lord. To follow Christ was to find the goal of eternal 
bliss; to obey Him insured a joyous freedom. His brethren 
in the enterprise were as he was; together they stood out 
against the background of uncertainties and dangers every- 
where abroad, “blameless and harmless, children of God 
without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse gen- 
eration.” 1! Beneath their ministry of the Word a hallow- 

11 Philippians II. 15. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 243 


ing tenderness subdued the adamantine temper of the age. 
For a brief moment it seemed as though ‘‘the Kingdom in 
which dwelleth righteousness ”’ had indeed come. The hard- 
ships attending their evangelization of the nations were 
transformed into delights by the romantic gladness of the 
more spiritual Franciscans. They sought the poor, the for- 
saken, the morally destitute, and became one with them that 
they might upraise them. To this end they explored the 
rookeries outside the walls of medieval towns and cities, and 
entered the hovels of rustic hamlets, addressing their miser- 
able occupants in words they could understand, and winning 
them to a cleaner and more spiritual life. Such evangel- 
ists as they proved to be, sharing all naked needs and facing 
all hazards, are the immediate gifts of the Spirit of God. 
Their apologetic values surpass those of the Schools. They 
admonish skeptical intellectuals in every age that: 


“On our heels a fresh perfection treads, 
A power more strong in beauty.” 


After the first glow of the Revival had subsided in those 
depravities of the fourteenth century which quenched its 
brightness, it was gratefully recalled by believing souls. 
Its influence survived the loud tumults of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, and remain to this day as a witness to the innate author- 
ity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ over the human soul. The 
fame of St. Francis has recently overshadowed that of St. 
Bernard, whose demands upon himself and upon his brethren 
at Clairvaux were extraordinary. He was almost the last 
first class theologian produced by the older orders; a saint 
whose eloquence moved the hearts of princes and peoples 
alike. “The Abbot Bernard,” wrote Eude de Deuil, “hid a 
robust soul under a frail and seemingly dying body. He went 
about like the wind, preaching everywhere.” The King of 

12.Cf, Henry Osborn Taylor: ‘‘ The Medieval Mind,’’ Vol. I. p. 431 ff. 


‘‘ Life of St. Francis of Assisi,’’ by Paul Sabatier; G. K. Chesterton: “ St; 
Francis of Assisi.’ 


244 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


France attended some of his itineraries. The orator’s 
clothes were torn off him and made into crosses. © 

One should do justice to Monasticism and to its founders, 
and portray them as Cromwell insisted he should be painted; 
“with the warts.” As an international fraternity it was a 
“mixed magnitude,” with opposing characteristics that 
forbid rapid generalization. The debt which Christianity 
owes it, as we have seen, is great enough, though not so great 
as some have claimed. There was generally a regrettable 
distance between the monk and his rule. It gave the State 
and the Church such guiding spirits as Lanfranc and Anselm. 
The great Cistercian, Franciscan and Dominican movements 
and revivals stirred up the Cenobitic sea for a time. But 
Popes and Councils tried in vain to keep it from re-stagnation. 
Dr. Coulton comments that “the true monk lived a noble 
life, but it was not really Christ’s life.’ Principal Workman 
speaks of the age-long errors: for instance, that the monks 
were great builders of churches, or that all dwelt in dark 
monastic cells, or that they founded our universities and es- 
tablished our schools; which have begun to give way to more 
accurate knowledge. Nearly every European State has legis- 
lated against the monks, and again and again the Church had 
openly to reprimand the later friars. Their religious concep- 
tions no longer commend themselves to the ethical judgments 
of mankind. The secret of their downfall was that human 
nature being what it is, the monastic system could not have 
been other than it eventually became. The shipwreck of so 
many good intentions, and the destruction of numerous social 
and religious ties, were sad but mevitable consequences. 
Frivolity instead of zeal, gluttony instead of abstinence, greed 
instead of alms-giving, malice instead of charity, boasting 
instead of meekness, eventually devoured the noble heart of 
original Monasticism, and destroyed the zeal of the earlier 
Orders. Invectives, satires, expostulations, alike from friend 
and foe, bear witness with camera-like candor to the intrigues 

13 Cf. F. Funck Brentano: ‘‘ The Middle Ages, ’”’ p. 248. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 245 


and evils that corrupted later Monasticism, and its rivals, the 
later Friars. An intense public animosity sometimes found 
vent in these exposures. Almost the first place to be attacked 
in a city riot was the monastery. Its occupants were often 
at daggers drawn with the populace and the nobility. The 
secular clergy resented the wealth and aloofness of the regu- 
lars. So the institutions which once had been rich with bless- 
ing for the individual and for society were now viewed with 
widespread and implacable hostility. The reasonable de- 
fense of the system is that, taken as a whole, it did 
infinitely more good than evil. To assert either that it was 
entirely beneficial or entirely harmful is a controversial 
trick. Here the matter may be left, with the added com- 
ment that the waning of Monasticism predicted the collapse 
of Medizeval Imperialism. ‘4 

There is no particular reason why we should enlarge upon 
the current superstitions with which Monasticism was iden- 
tified. Veneration of relics, image worship and the like, were 
no worse than some practices that afflict our generation. In 
fact, the modern cults are often more intolerable because they 
are more irrational and degrading than those of the Middle 
Ages. It is to the point, however, to observe that the myths 
typical of the period often captured its ablest minds, and 
occasionally fashioned human character upon more tractable 
lines. Not a few of the Dominicans rose above them, and 
steeped their preaching in an intellectualism derived from 
Augustinian theology, which may be favorably compared 
with that of modern divines. ‘The spiritual jurisdiction 
which lent itself to casuistry, “that baleful shadow which 
clings so closely to nearly all great religious movements,” 

14 Cf, ‘* The London Spectator,’’ April 28, 1923, pp. 712-713; Also G. G. 
Coulton: ‘‘ Five Centuries of Religion,’ Vol, I. ‘‘St. Bernard, His Pre- 
decessors and Successors’; Principal Herbert B. Workman: ‘“‘ Evolution 
of the Monastic Ideal’’ (a masterly work); Cardinal Gasquet: ‘‘ Henry 
VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries,’”’ and his ‘* English Monastic 
Life’; Mr. Heimbucher: ‘‘ Die Orden und Kongregationen der Katholische 


Kirche,’’ André Lagarde: ‘‘ The Latin Church in the Middle Ages,’’ Chap- 
ters III and XI. 


246 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


was offset by the logical discourses of these members of the 
second great Monastic Order. Its founder, St. Dominic, 
soon became aware of the futility of persecution for heresy, 
and attacked it, not so much as the result of wilful depravity 
but as the source of speculative error. We do not now seri- 
ously think that heresy is to be ascribed to immorality of 
life. ‘Even the official mouthpiece of established beliefs 
now usually represent a bad heart as only one among other 
possible causes of unbelief. It divides the curse with igno- 
rance, intellectual shallowness, the unfortunate influence of 
plausible heresiarchs, and other alternative roots of evil.’ 
But while the Papacy was making its last rally to weld 
Europe into spiritual unity by means of the Crusades, and 
the Mendicant Friars were assisting the effort, heresy- 
hunting began afresh, and has run an intermittent course 
until now. 

The great name of Innocent III is stained by its connec- 
tion with the establishment of the Inquisition, which was in 
itself another token of the nearing collapse of Medizeval Im- 
perialism.’* That persecution for the sake of religious con- 
formity is always unwise because it is damnably wicked, 
is perhaps a trite remark. What is not so trite is the state- 
ment that the persecutor himself stands on the verge of his 
own destruction. The killing of schismatics, sectaries, 
Jews and heretical groups, and the confiscation of their 
goods, only served to advertise their peculiar views and 
their fortitude. The Marian martyrdoms made England 
unquestionably Protestant for four hundred years, and the 
“smell of the burnings” in Scotland brought about the same 
result in that nation. Such infamous outrages were sure 
to react against those responsible for their perpetration. 
Nor could they be defended on the ground of ignorance, still 
less that of necessity. Toleration was as well understood 
then as it is now, but it was purposely repudiated by Roman 


15 Viscount Morley: ‘‘On Compromise,”’ p. 159. 
16 Cf. H. C. Lea: ‘“ A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.”’ 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 247 


Catholics and Protestants, in behalf of a monarchical suprem- 
acy or an ecclesiastical unity upon which they themselves 
were never agreed. 

The Church that could descend to the abominable prac- 
tices of the Holy Office was certainly speeding toward failure. 
The State that could license these practices was sooner or 
later bound to succumb. Three distinct movements began 
to undermine their citadels of terror, and afterwards took 
historic shape in Puritanism, Mysticism, and Skepticism. 
Meanwhile the Waldenses, Albigenses, anti-Ritualists, Man- 
icheans, Quietists, as well as the Flagellants and other 
groups of various sorts, were as the straws which showed 
which way the stream of medieval life and thought was flow- 
ing. In them, as in the Wyclifians and the Hussites, were 
some primal sources of the overturning which had been im- 
possible in the twelfth century, and was unavoidable in the 
sixteenth. The unification of society that could not be 
achieved by the might of Hildebrand, Alexander III or 
Innocent III, was a hopeless task for succeeding Popes who 
were but a parody on those princes. Their quarrels with the 
Empire lingered on until the fatal arrogance of Boniface 
VIII precipitated what Dante describes as “‘the mockery, the 
vinegar, the gall, of a new crucifixion of the Vicar of Christ.” 
At the time he wrote these words the Holy See was smothered 
in ignominy at Avignon. But the handwriting on the walls 
of Christendom had been there since the failure of the Cru- 
sades and the rise of the Ottoman Power. 

When there was a peaceful interlude between Gregory IX 
and Frederic II, the greatest of the Hohenstaufens, it was 
nothing more than outward amity concealing inward dis- 
trust. Frederic was a wary and dangerous antagonist of the 
Pontificate. ‘‘Extraordinarily varied and many-sided,” he 
“reflected every aspect of his time, and responded to every 
impulse.” Full of the joy of life, of art, of friendship, the 
Emperor’s nature, though it sometimes chilled his retainers, 
more often warmed and won them. By contrast with him, 


248 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


the figures of the three Pontiffs whom he overcame seemed 
“cold, narrow, unlovable, and even inhuman.” His sudden 
death on December 18, 1250, gave imperial affairs another 
complexion. His son Conrad IV succeeded him, and died in 
May, 1254. Yet he reigned long enough for Innocent IV, 
who was a far better diplomatist than Conrad, to outwit him 
at every turn. The Pontiff’s astute methods savored of de- 
ceit, and reduced the German Church to a mere “agency of 
temporal welfare, producing a deep resentment not only 
among the German laity, but among the finer minds of the 
clergy.’ Innocent did not have the nobility of soul of his 
namesake Innocent III, nor the moral strength of Honorius 
III, nor the fiery vehemence of Gregory IX. Nevertheless, 
he trampled down opposition and enthroned the spiritual 
over the temporal authority. His worldly wisdom, self- 
control, knowledge of the canon law, and financial prudence 
served his immediate purpose by enabling him to humiliate 
the Empire. But he left the Pontificate heavily encumbered 
with those obligations which low politics have always be- 
queathed to the Church. 


LY. 


The seeds of divergencies and insurrection sown by the 
talented but wily Innocent soon began to germinate. The 
strife between Guelfs and Ghibellines, apparently quelled by 
him, really entered upon its final and most disastrous phase. 
The Guelfs became victorious after the battle of Campaldino 
in 1289, and the prospects of their secure control of Florence 
were bright until 1300, when this party was split mto two 
rival sections, known as the “‘ Whites” and the “ Blacks,” and 
distinguished by their respective allegiances to the Republic 
and the Pope. By a coup d’état the Black Guelfs won over 
the papal emissary who had been sent to make peace be- 
tween the two factions, with the result that the leaders of the 
“Whites,” including their foremost champion Dante, were 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDLEVAL IMPERIALISM 249 


exiled. For a while Dante renounced his ancestral party, and 
identified himself with the Ghibellines, but he found that 
they viewed the Empire as a means to secure their own party 
supremacy. He therefore abandoned them, and henceforth 
lived without any party affiliations, becoming as it were a 
party in himself.!’ While in exile he wrote his “De Mon- 
archia,”’ in which he laid down in scholastic syllogisms his 
ideal of a universal empire founded on justice, without any 
element of faction. Dante’s hatred of endless internecine 
wars which threatened the unity and peace of his country, 
caused him to raise a soul-piercing cry for some power strong 
enough to quell the tempest. This power was not to be found 
in the Papacy, but in the Empire. Only when the Emperor 
became the sole shepherd of the one civic flock would man- 
kind secure freedom and peace. 

After the scholastic fashion, he developed in three books 
his three principles; that universal monarchy was necessary 
for society; that this imperium belonged to the Roman people; 
that its authority was derived immediately from God and not 
from the Pope as His Vicar. In an indignant outburst he 
impeached the misuses of her wealth by the Church. “The 
patrimony of the poor’’ had been squandered by its spiritual 
overseers, while the private estates of their own kinsfolk 
were suddenly enriched. Asa citizen Dante shared the preva- 
lent view that Church and State were an entity, in which Pope 
and Emperor should behave as brothers holding joint author- 
ity; with the proviso that supremacy belonged to the civic 
rule.4® Hence he contended that there must be one Federal 
State, with a single head, and that both the State and its 
ruler must be Christian. ‘Man,’ he said, ‘had need of two 
guides for his life, as he had a twofold end im life; whereof 
one is the Supreme Pontiff, to lead mankind to eternal life 
according to the things revealed to us; and the other is the 
Emperor, to guide mankind to happiness in the world, in ac- 


17 Cf. ‘‘ Paradiso,’’ Canto XVII, 68-69. 
18 Cf. J. N. Figgis: ‘‘ Churches in the Modern State,’’ p. 190 ff. 


250 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


cordance with the teaching of philosophy.” Ceasar must be 
reverent toward St. Peter, but “the authority of temporal 
monarchy comes down with no intermediate will from the 
fountain of universal authority.” % 

The controversy between the Pope and the Emperor bore 
upon the relative position of each to the other. But the 
breach could have been healed had the disputants conceded 
that the two thrones were equally balanced, and alike de- 
rived from God as the source of all law. Dante prayed for a 
monarchy of the world: a reign of tranquility, righteousness 
and Christian fraternity. Those who five centuries later 
invoked his great name as the earliest prophet of their creed, 
strove after an idea that never crossed hismind. He was not 
seeking the national unification of Italy, but of Europe, and 
through Europe of the world; to be achieved by the exclusion 
of the Papacy from secular government, and the supremacy 
of that government in all temporal matters, beneath the 
cegis of the Emperorship.”° Justice required a supreme ruler, 
himself above the prejudice and animosity of parties, im- 
pervious to the solicitations of ambitions; since his dominions 
were commensurate with Christendom, and his highest polit- 
ical aspirations were completely satisfied. 

The reader who has opportunity to scan Dante’s pages 
probably will turn with impatience from imperialistic theories 
whose absoluteness is only matched by their historic unreal- 
ity. He will marvel at the fantastic medieval logic that at- 
tempted to prove that Christ was born under the Roman Em- 
pire, ‘‘in the fulness of times,” because He was persuaded of 
its justice; while by dying under the sentence of that Empire 
He sanctioned its sway over the whole human race. Such a 
reader will marvel most of all at the chapter in which Dante 
set forth the miracles whereby God had indorsed the author- 
ity of the Empire. The fall of the shields of Numa, the fable 
of the geese of the Capitol, the hailstorm after Cann, and 


19** Tye Monarchia,’’ Book III. Ch. XVI. 
20 Cf. Viscount Bryce: ‘‘ The Holy Roman Empire,” Ch. XVI. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAEVAL IMPERIALISM 251 


similar fictions, were gravely quoted as irrefutable proofs 
of the Divine intervention in favor of Rome. And he will 
probably recall that within a few years after the poet’s glori- 
fication, this very Empire, under Lewis of Bavaria and his 
successors, sank to its lowest depths of feebleness and corrup- 
tion. But Dante’s impassioned tributes should not be alto- 
gether disqualified by our standards of history or appeals to 
facts. Despite his romancings, the remorseless chill of his 
detachment of view pervaded many of his judgments. Ever 
and anon the touch of his almost infallible authority is felt; 
of a nature whose supernal gifts can only be compared with 
those of Shakespeare. Thus, as Viscount Bryce has shown, 
with reference to the date at which it was written, Dante’s 
eulogy proved ‘‘an epitaph instead of a prophecy.’”’ No ab- 
stract splendors of theory, no idealized descriptions, no com- 
pressed energy of diction, could conceal from later onlookers 
that the medieval concept was dead; that the once boasted 
imperialism of Charles the Great had become scarcely more 
than an honored name. Its diploma of sovereignty was, in 
the telling phrase of Gregorovius, but “‘a document smoth- 
ered in dust, on which were inscribed claims to universal 
supremacy.” No small factor in the verdict was the clear- 
ness with which the poet’s genius was compelled to testify 
against his dearest wishes as a patriot. His ideal insisted on 
looking backward instead of forward. Asa partisan he would 
not admit that no earthly throne forever remains; no altar 
always stand secure. Nevertheless, the prophetic depths 
within Dante perforce assented to this truth. 

For us to point out these unavoidable changes is not to 
covet them. On the contrary, there was a very desirable pos- 
sibility for good in the Imperial Federalism which Dante 
envisaged. But the betterment and stability of human soci- 
ety could not be secured by a system which had already mis- 
used its opportunity, and was fast disappearing. It is only 
fair to add that the poet’s dream was not entirely monopo- 
lized by a vanishing past. For us the chief importance of 


252 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


“De Monarchia”’ consists in its ennoblement of the political 
rule which held the reversion of the future. The work trans- 
lated the presidency of the world Commonwealth from 
Church to State. Its ideal temporal monarch, ‘“‘rex mundi 
et Dei minister,’”’ was but Hildebrand’s ideal Pontiff with a 
difference. The secular realm became the concrete embodi- 
ment of the Divine Order in society, and also the revelation 
of the operation of the Divine Spirit in man. As Gregoro- 
vius justly remarks, there lay at the bottom of ‘‘ Dante’s en- 
thusiasm for the Roman Empire, a deep love of historic hu- 
manity, the life of which, in all its revelations, is conceived as 
a revelation of the Divine Spirit, having no lower claims than 
those of the Church.’”’ To that life and its relations, every 
organization, however sacred, must be serviceable. Herein 
the poet has proved to be, as in all else he wrote besides 
“De Monarchia,” a great prophet of the future. In spite 
of its abstractions and unrealities, by reason of its denun- 
ciation of clerical tyranny, and still more because of its em- 
phasis on the values of secular life, the work laid solid found- 
ations upon which forthcoming statesmen could build. 

The resounding lines of the “ Aneid,’’ which inspired 
Dante’s theory of the imperial rule: 


“Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento,— 
Hae tibi erunt artes,—pacisque imponere morem, 
Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos,”’ 21 


were destined to find their accomplishment, not by seeking 
the living among the dead, but by the evolution of the near 
future. In July, 1338, Germany awoke to the consciousness 
of the unendurable suzerainty which the Empire had ac- 
quired over her. At Rhense, a hamlet on the Rhine, five 
miles from Coblenz, the German electors renounced in the 
name of the nations the claims of the Papacy to ratify or re- 
ject their nomination as imperial electors. This separation 
of the twin partners in the dualism of Empire and Church was 
21 Book VI. 851-3. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 253 


the beginning of the greater severance of the German intel- 
lect from the Holy See. At the same time, in Italy, the ad- 
venturer, Cola di Rienzi, seized and exploited the then novel 
idea of revolt. The insurrectionist was something more than 
a “tragic actor in the tattered purple of antiquity.” His 
significance is attributable to his discovery that the salvation 
of Italy was neither of Guelf nor of Ghibelline, but must pro- 
ceed from Italy herself. Though in later years Rienzi dis- 
graced his purpose, and though five centuries had yet to 
elapse before it could be attained, its author, despite his ex- 
travagances, is worthy of mention for having advocated the 
idea of justifiable revolution. 


V 


Marsiglio of Padua, the gifted and fearless apologist of the 
Ghibellines, was another interesting if impracticable thinker 
whose writings marked the rapid dissolution of the medieval 
dominion. His epochal work, ‘‘ Defensor Pacis,” erred in the 
opposite direction from that of Dante by projecting upon 
society advanced theories which were not even understood, 
much less appreciated, until modern times. ' Born of a burg- 
her family in Padua in 1270, Marsiglio’s restless disposition 
drove him from the study of medicine to the profession of 
arms. In 1321 he resided at Paris as a pupil of William of 
Ockham. In March of the following year, while rector of the 
University there, he issued regulations under its seal. The 
theologians of Paris afterwards made a declaration in 1375 
that neither Marsiglio nor his friend, John of Jandun, ever 
graduated in theology, even as bachelors. Yet they seem to 
have begun the course. At a later date Marsiglio took orders 
as a secular cleric. Though an ally of the Spiritual Francis- 
cans, he did not enter their ranks. By occupation it would 
appear that eventually he practiced as a physician. These 
fragmentary references to a roaming scholar’s career are not 
strictly necessary to our quest, since it was not as a physician 


254 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


nor as a scholastic theologian that Marsiglio made his repu- 
tation, but as a publicist and politician. He showed his bent 
at an early date by writing in 1313 on the wellworn theme 
of the transference of the Empire. On June 24, 1324, with the 
help of John of Jandun, he finished his masterpiece ‘‘ Defen- 
sor Pacis”’ within the almost incredible space of two months. 
Two years later the two men, who were dubbed by the Pope 
as ‘“‘beasts from the abyss of Satan,” joined themselves to 
Lewis of Bavaria at Nuremburg. 

At the court of Lewis, Marsiglio became the leader of a 
band of daring visionaries who defied the Holy See, and 
backed the Emperor in his contest for secular supremacy. 
Ockham is reported to have said to Lewis, when in 1328 he 
fled to his court at Pisa: “‘Do thou defend me with thy 
sword; I will defend thee with my pen.’”’ Both master and 
pupil kept their promise. In treatise after treatise they at- 
tacked the nature of the papal rule, denied its assertions, 
ridiculed the reigning Pontiff, whom they called ‘‘priest 
John of Cahors,’’ and pronounced him a guilty heretic al- 
ready virtually deposed. The Pope retorted by upbraiding 
Lewis for his patronage of such refractory wretches. Since 
his reproaches had no effect, on October 23, 1327, he con- 
demned the book ‘‘ Defensor Pacis,’’ and on May 30, 1329, 
ordered steps to be taken against its author. These measures 
were followed by a more formal condemnation in the Papal 
Bull ‘‘Cum Processum,’’ issued in 1330. 

The work thus launched in a hurricane of villification is 
the most original and suggestive political treatise of Mediz- . 
valism. Its importance is revealed by the number of its man- 
uscript copies, at least twenty of which still exist in various 
libraries of Europe. It begins, as the title indicates, in the 
praise of peace, and with a recital of the intolerable hurts that 
come of strife. From the prelude Marsiglio naturally passes 
to ‘fopen the sophism of this said singular cause of discord 
which threateneth to all realms and communities no little 
harm,” The first section or volume discusses in Aristotelian 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 255 


forms the origin and principles of government. After the 
usual medizeval manner, as seen in Hildebrand and other con- 
temporary authorities, the author relates the effects of 
Adam’s Fall upon political administration. In digression, 
one may note that Marsiglio, a typical Italian, defines a city 
“as a perfect community having in itself all things necessary 
to the sufficiency of life, and ordained not only for man to 
live in, but principally to live well in.”’ From this proposition 
he deduces that in such a city bondage is illogical, “‘for that 
thing which is thrall or bond cannot be sufficient in itself.” 
Sovereignty therefore pertains to the whole body of citizens, 
and freeman should agree to this end. For the purpose of 
action, ‘‘the rule of a king is perhaps the more perfect,” but 
the king, as the people’s officer, must be directly elected by 
them. He abjured divine right and the hereditary principle 
as outside the pale of reason. In this he followed the argu- 
ment of another hardy speculator to whom reference has been 
made, Manegold of Lautenbach in Alsace. The elected mon- 
arch was responsible to his subjects, whose instrument he was, 
and by whom he could be deposed if he thwarted the national 
will. In his conception of human equality, a fundamental of 
Christianity altogether lacking in many authors of the age, 
Marsiglio was only pushing to their logical conclusion the 
premises of modern politics. The marrow of Jeffersonian 
doctrine was contained in the writings of this obscure and 
nomadic partisan of the fourteenth century. 

In his second volume he submitted the nature and claims 
of the priesthood to a no less microscopic and startling exam- 
ination. He began by defining the Church as the entire 
body of Christian men; “the university (universitas) and 
congregation of all faithful believers and callers upon the 
name of Jesus Christ; which is the most true and proper sig- 
nification.’”’ The idea that the Church was founded upon or 
restricted to the sacerdotal order was summarily excluded. 
The sole business of the priest was to preach the Faith and 
administer the Sacraments. “There is,” he owned, ‘‘an- 


256 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


other certain authority belonging to the priest, that is, 
whereby bread and wine is transubstantiated or turned into 
the substance of Christ’s blessed body at the oration of the 
priest.” But this authority was solely spiritual, and the 
priest’s rights should be limited accordingly. Excommuni- 
cation, for instance, the most dreaded weapon of the clerical 
arm, could only be decreed by the entire congregation to 
which the erring member belonged. In all but their religious 
functions the clergy were to be treated as members of the 
civil society, save only that their offenses should be punished 
with greater severity because they could not plead igno- 
rance of the laws. Marsiglio seconded Jerome in maintaining 
that bishop and presbyter were convertible terms. More 
advanced than these views was his assertion that heresy 
should go unpenalized in this world, except in so far as it 
proved inimical to the State; and even then its repression 
should be confined to the civil jurisdiction. 

The result of his reasonings reduced Church government 
to a matter of expediency. Though theoretically all priests 
were equal, the Papacy, he held, was a convenient symbol of 
the unity of the Church and an historic center for her work. 
None the less, however, did he set aside the trustworthiness 
of papal historicity, stating that it was doubtful if St. Peter 
had ever been Bishop of Rome; nor was he in any way supe- 
rior to the other apostles, nor did he communicate any spir- 
itual gifts to his successors. The Decretals were not necessary 
to salvation, since these “according to truth are nothing 
else but certain ordinances, constitutions or decrees. . . 
which Christian men are not bound . . . to obey.’”’ The 
origin of the Holy See was traced by him with rare critical 
insight to the influence of the Roman Empire and to the 
Donation of Constantine, the genuineness of which he did 
not dispute. The power of the keys is “the science of 
knowledge, discerning the good from the evil.” They 
opened and closed the doors of pardon to the penitent, but 
the turnkey was not the judge. Without the contrition of 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIZVAL IMPERIALISM 257 


the sinner, priestly absolution was of no avail, since it was 
God alone who cleansed men inwardly. The Papacy had 
no temporal sovereignty, nor should priests meddle with 
secular judgments. As servants and ministers of Christ, let 
them be patterned after His precept and example, Who 
deliberately refused the dignity of a monarchy, and said, 
“My Kingdom is not of this world.” With Marsiglio, as 
with Calvin, the State and the Church became practically 
- one. But it was the State which must summon all clergy, 
high and low, even the Pope himself, to its bar; and their 
number and allotment were to be determined by its pleasure. 
Patronage belonged to it, and should, as a rule, be exercised 
by the free action of parishes and churches. Ecclesiastical 
property was to be vested in the State, which could at any 
time secularize superiluities to other uses, a claim that Christ 
acknowledged when He paid tribute to Cesar. 

The most impressive of Marsiglio’s ecclesiastical conten- 
tions was his plea for a General Council, to be composed of 
clericals and laymen alike, acting as the Supreme Court of the 
Church Universal; and as the Parliament of federated nations 
in matters temporal or spiritual, adjudicating Catholic belief 
and practice. This was, in truth, nothing less than that repre- 
sentative assembly of united Christendom for which many 
enlightened citizens are now asking. Its interpretation of 
creeds should in all cases be solely based upon the Bible as 
the source of Faith and Order. The Popes must be bound by 
its decisions, and it alone should pronounce excommunica- 
tion upon rulers or their subjects. 

It is quite comprehensible that to the Holy See Marsiglio 
was a heretic of heretics. But the Empire which he had de- 
fended had need to beware of an independent and fearless 
advocate, many of whose arguments were made not merely 
in behalf of imperial sovereignty, but in the interests of the 
people as against the pretensions of absolutism. ‘What do 
you find there,” he asks, speaking of the Papacy, “but a 
swarm of simoniacs from every quarter? What but the 


208 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


clamor of pettifoggers, the insults of calumny, the abuse of 
honorable men? ‘There justice to the innocent falls to the 
ground or is so long delayed unless they can buy it for a price 
that finally, worn out with endless struggle, they are com- 
pelled to give up even just and deserving claims. For there 
man-made laws are loudly proclaimed; the laws of God are 
silent or rarely heard. ‘There are hatched conspiracies and 
plots for invading the territories of Christian peoples and 
snatching them from their lawful guardians. But for the 
winning of souls there is neither care nor counsel.” 7? His 
animadversions upon the clergy were no less caustic. There 
had been a time when doubtful questions could be settled by 
them. “Now, however, on account of the corruption of the 
Church administration, the greater part of the priests and 
bishops are but little versed in sacred Scriptures, so that the 
temporalities of benefices are gained by greedy and litigious 
office seekers, through servility, or importunity, or bribery, 
or physical violence. And, before God and the company of 
the faithful, I have known numbers of priests, abbots, and 
other Church dignitaries of such low quality that they could 
not even speak grammatically. And what is worse, I have 
known and seen a man less than twenty years of age, and al- 
most completely ignorant of the divine law, entrusted with 
the office of bishop in a great and important city, when he 
not only lacked priestly ordination, but had not passed 
through the diaconate or subdiaconate.”’ 78 

These presentations, which were far in advance of the era, 
received two centuries later a strong impetus at the Refor- 
mation ; and, later still, in the following century, were the bone 
of contention between English Independency and the Stuart 
dynasty. But it is only in our day that men are beginning to 
recognize what Marsiglio foresaw: that the Church of the 
future must be a layman’s Church, not in the sense of dis- 
carding the division of clerics and laymen, or that of labor 


22. Emerton: ‘‘ Phe Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua, ’’ p. 66. 
23). Emerton: ‘‘ The Defensor Pacis of Marsiglio of Padua, ”’ p. 53. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 259 


between teacher and taught, but in placing all members of 
the Church on an equal basis of spiritual liberty, privilege, 
and responsibility. Marsiglio’s political radicalism secured 
for him the rabid detestation of the hierarchy which had al- 
ready branded the mildest of constitutionalists, Simon de 
Montfort, as “that pestilent man.’”’ When to this radicalism 
were added Marsiglio’s revolutionary proposals against 
Church authority, his cup of iniquity was filled to overflowing. 

He was a visionary only in the sense in which all predic- 
tive spirits are such. Of necessity the seer is before his age, 
and the vindication of his utterance may be indefinitely 
postponed. Yet no contemporary thinker had a clearer gaze 
than this medizval modernist, or saw more deeply into the 
future toward which a stubborn world reluctantly moved. 
In his principles, as Dr. Poole observes, statesmen of today 
find little to alter; they have had but to develop and fill in 
their outlines.24 Much that was valuable in the political and 
ecclesiastical writing of Wycliff had already been expressed 
more succinctly and with greater force in the writings of Mar- 
siglio. He possessed in a preéminent degree that lucidity of 
his race which enabled him to expound and apply with pres- 
cience the ideals that now regulate civilized States. The bolts 
forged in his ardent mind clove asunder the doctrine of divine 
right, and seriously disturbed the temporal claims of the 
Papacy. His wise and accurate estimate of Holy Scripture 
preceded that of Wyclif, Luther and Calvin. In his remon- 
strance against the exclusion of the laity from official posi- 
tions in the Church, he anticipated the stroke of temerity by 
which Wesley made Methodism a world-power. His insist- 
ence upon the autonomy of local congregations signalized 
him as the forerunner of Independency. A matured judg- 
ment upon the author of “Defensor Pacis” entitles him to 
the honors of a herald of beneficial movements, with which 
other and more familiar names have been associated at the 
expense of his own. 

24 Cf. R. L. Poole: ‘‘ Illustrations of the History of Medizval Thought.” 


260 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Marsiglio was, however, far from being without influence 
upon his age. About the close of 1374, his work was trans- 
lated from Latin “into French or an idiom such as meets the 
approval of the Emperor and other earthly potentates.” In 
September, 1375, an unfriendly inquiry was instituted con- 
cerning the translation. The members of the Theological 
Faculty of Paris were convened, and individually questioned 
whether they knew or had suspicion who had committed the 
offense, but the inquisition seems to have been in vain. 
Meanwhile Marsiglio’s masterly formulation of the idea of 
a supreme Church parliament won a widening acceptance. 
However much he may have disliked some of its conclusions, 
the learned Gerson, the leader of the conciliar party at Con- 
stance, praised the ‘Defensor Pacis” as “mirabiliter bene 
fundatus’’; a eulogy that helps to explain the ease with which 
its conciliar theory gained ground. A copy of the work fell 
into the hands of that sturdy opponent of prevalent abuses, 
Dr. Thomas Gascoigne of Oxford, who gave it to Lincoln 
College. In 1529 it was placed on the list of prohibited works, 
but this act did not prevent its translation into English six 
years later by one William Marshall, an enthusiastic re- 
former who served as one of Thomas Cromwell’s agents. In 
his definition of the limits of ecclesiastical authority and his 
assertion of the native dignity of the individual believer, 
Marsiglio’s ideas still await complete realization. Neverthe- 
less, for breadth and verity of speculation he stood solitary, 
and superior to the thinkers and writers of his age. The truths 
which he alone brought into view afterwards had to be redis- 
covered at immense cost by political philosophers of modern 
times, who were scarcely aware of his existence. 


VI 


Wyclif’s contribution to the collapse of Medieval Imperial- 
ism, and his conception of Church and State must not be 
passed over, if only because of their national results in Bo- 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 261 


hemia, where John Huss adopted almost word for word the 
Englishman’s “De Ecclesia” as the original of his publica- 
tions. I have discussed the Evangelical Doctor’s relations 
to his time elsewhere, and they do not concern us here except 
as they cast light upon the issues before us.2° His declara- 
tion that the Church militant consisted solely of the predes- 
tinated, and so could contain none but the elect, was his chief 
contribution to the problem. No man, not even a Pope, knew 
whether he was blessed or reprobate. The secret of the eter- 
nal separation between the saved and the lost was with the 
God who decreed it. No earthly institution, not even the 
Church, but a heavenly fiat, became the center of His re- 
demptive design; a fiat existent in His timeless present with 
Whom was neither past nor future. This scholastic con- 
struction, too artificial and inflexible for use or benefit, had 
no actual connection with human life, nor with the facts of 
which its idealism fell foul. The same major fault is visible 
in Wyclif’s doctrine of the State, which can be ascertained 
from his ‘De Officio Regis,’ a companion work to “ De Eccle- 
sia,’’ and afterwards recast and enlarged as the eighth volume 
of his great “Summa.” *° He there stated that his object 
was to treat of the military caste, as in ‘De Ecclesia” he had 
treated of the clerical; and specifically to show what the 
kingly office was, and what were its relations to the sacer- 
dotal power. His starting point, furnished by his opponents, 
lay in their plea that as a civil dominion is a perfection, it must 
belong to the most perfect part of the Church. His reply, 
disentangled from needless digressions, allegorical wrestings 
of Scripture and feudal terminologies, was, that since the 
kingly office derived immediately from God, it was independ- 
ent of the Church and the Papacy. ‘This divine origin was 
recognized by Christ in the Adoration of the Magi, and by 
the teaching of the New Testament in reference to monarchy. 


25 Cf. The Author’s ‘‘The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford,’’ pp. 15- 
170. 

26 ‘* De Officio Regis,’’ has been printed by the Wyclif Society and is edited 
by A. W. Pollard, under the date 1887. 


262 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


The Monarch was God’s vicar as the Pope was Christ’s vicar, 
and as God’s vicar he was obligated to exhibit heavenly jus- 
tice in all his actions. 

Wyclif was addicted to fanciful portrayals of the king as 
embodying the divinity, and the priest the humanity of 
Christ: a medizval notion due to the statements of St. Augus- 
tine, Ambrosiaster and Cathulfus that “the king has the 
image of God, as the bishop has that of Christ.”” This idea 
he amplified to mean that the king represented the glorified 
and reigning Lord, the priest the suffering and submissive 
Jesus. The one was the image of the will, the other of the 
love of Deity. The real significance of the priest, whose 
office was the more perfect and honorable, was in his sanctity 
and humility. Farther removed from the world, he was there- 
fore greater than the king. To confirm this view Wyclif 
twisted the Decretal of Innocent III in a way that would 
have outraged that Pontiff. Outward or “sensible honor” 
was to be rendered more freely to kings than to priests, for 
though the Pope was spiritually above the Monarch, the Mon- 
arch was temporarily above the Pope. Both enjoyed author- 
ity from God, but that of the king was prior to that of the 
priest. ‘‘Adam,” said St. Augustine, “was the first king and 
Cain the first priest.”” The priestly consecration of the king 
conferred no superior powers upon his consecrators. Cor- 
rupt kings, though possessing veritable lordship, must be 
recognized as appointed by God, just as froward priests 
were esteemed for the sake of their office, or as the image of 
their Creator was honored even in the damned. But if 
wicked kings injured God’s cause, they should be withstood 
to the death: an advice that Wyclif at once qualified by 
emphasizing the non-resistance of our Lord and His martyrs. 

In the second chapter of ‘De Officio Regis” he distin- 
guished at length between the consideration due to office and 
that due to merit, and insisted that no cleric should receive 
credit because of his connection with lay dignities. The 
futile pursuit of worldly rewards and emoluments was habit- 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 263 


ual in ‘‘scholastic camps,”’ where the worst that could be was 
seen in priests by profession, who were proud militarists in 
practice. To forbid these clerics to marry, while granting 
them the tenure and income of lay offices, was to strain out a 
gnat and swallow a camel. The third chapter related in some 
detail the duties of the king. He should be a man of integrity 
and wisdom, versed in the holy oracles, with prudent coun- 
sellors and domestic chaplains who were infinitely more than 
mere table companions. He must realize that good govern- 
ment was best secured by a few just laws which should never 
be abrogated save for the most cogent reasons. As God’s 
vicar he was to rule in humility, submissive to the Eternal 
Righteousness, and mindful that justice was the brightest of 
the virtues. He must see to it that the clergy lived on their 
tithes and private alms, and were deprived of the temporali- 
ties which they had acquired contrary to Scriptural command. 
With the ill-gotten wealth thus disgorged, capable ministers 
“might be hired for lay service.” To the objection that 
things consecrated could not be taken from the altar, Wy- 
clif replied that it was no violation to correct or improve their 
use. In the fourth chapter, he describes the extent of the 
royal prerogative, and insisted upon its jurisdiction over the 
clergy. The loyalty of the subject should never involve him 
in ‘‘sins of consent,” which were of five different kinds, alike 
damnable in a secular prince, and still more so ina cleric. As 
particulars he named the cases of monarchs who refused to 
withdraw temporalities from the clergy, and also of those 
who connived at simony. 

In the fifth chapter, Wyclif dealt with the king’s submis- 
sion to law; reasoning that law was divine and therefore obli- 
gatory upon all men. Our Lord Himself conformed to it, 
and His conduct should lead the king to do likewise, as an ex- 
ample of consistency and obedience to his people. He con- 
cluded the chapter with a disquisition on the essentials and 
limits of the obedience required, substantially identifying 
it with humility. In civil rule even Pilate was entitled to re- 


264 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


ceive the obedience of Christ.27 But as regards spiritual 
things, men should obey the veriest pauper, if he were a bet- 
ter man, rather than a corrupt Pontiff or Cesar. One ele- 
ment in true obedience was its freedom. Hence the discipline 
of the secular clergy was more worthy than that of the regu- 
lars. But in all obedience to the law rules laid down by 
Christ were the deciding factor. Papal Bulls and minor cler- 
ical proscriptions were of moment only as they harmonized 
with His Divine Will, and it was more perilous to resist God 
than to resist the Pope. Wyclif’s strategical position was 
thus left unprotected from sheer individualism, and the en- 
tire drift of this chapter has been construed by his enemies 
as an attack upon legitimate authority. In the sixth chapter 
he developed his theory in a fashion satisfactory to despots. 
Since the sin of any one person weakened the State, all sins 
should be probed by the king, from whom episcopal govern- 
ment itself was derived. His right to correct the secular 
clergy at the instigation of his clerical ministers had been 
fully acknowledged by the resort of Urban VI to the secular 
arm to crush the anti-pope. The higher the rank of the of- 
fending ecclesiastic, the more necessary became the king’s 
power of punishment. The claim of “‘Christ’s pretending 
vicar”’ to control monarchs was pure blasphemy; for the sole 
support of papal authority was in its purely spiritual nature. 

Parliamentary language was never Wyclif’s strong point, 
and he did nothing to tmprove in this matter the pro- 
nouncedly bad manners of his foes. When the Abbot of 
Chertsey would have abolished the authority of secular 
princes over the clergy, the Reformer railed upon him in a 
vigorous but vulgar tirade. Scattered throughout his dis- 
courses were forced comparisons, irrelevant references and 
numerous digressions, the meanings of which are more or less 
obscure. Occasionally his indomitable spirit flashed out, as 
in the request that some foreign born clericals should be made 


27 By obedience Wyclif simply meant recognition of existing facts and cir- 
cumstances. Passive resistance to them was dictated by internal principles. 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIZVAL IMPERIALISM 265 


to take the oath of allegiance on entering England. He also 
asserted that the monarch must not allow the lands of his 
knighthood to be assigned to the dead hand. He observed 
that if Pontiffs had deposed Emperors, Emperors had more 
often deposed Pontiffs, and that ‘England is not bound to 
obey any Pope except so far as obedience can be deduced 
from Scriptures.”’ In his later works he tirelessly inveighed 
against the doctrine that Monasticism was a more complete 
exhibition of Christianity than its ordinary forms. Nor 
would he allow that priesthood inhered in the clergy. The 
inflamed question of patronage was decided by him as be- 
longing wholly to the laity, and he denounced Pope John 
XXII for his reservation of English benefices and sees. The 
political side of his propaganda appeared in his appeal to the 
monarch to order yearly visitations of the clergy by ministers 
of State, who should investigate the conditions of the re- 
spective dioceses, and summon provincial Church Councils to 
remedy notorious abuses. Every parish must be occupied by 
scholarly and devout curates whose income ought to depend 
upon their efficiency. And the extension, defense and better- 
ment of the theological faculty of the Church was an impera- 
tive obligation of the Crown. 

Herein, as elsewhere, we see how representative Wyclif was 
of that national self-consciousness which presaged the com- 
ing England of an insistent and exclusive patriotism. Aware 
that education was indispensable to the good of the State, he 
pleaded for learned doctors and trained pastors, and would 
have made a clearance of the swarms of legalists who packed 
the higher courts of the Church. That they smarted under 
his attacks, and were prejudiced by them, was evident when 
in later years he came before them for trial as a heretic. But 
in his zeal for change he stammered out many things he did 
not fully understand, and showed at critical junctures the 
bewilderment of a brave soul lost in the twilight zone. Thus, 
while protesting against the reckless use of excommunication 
by the clergy, he asserted that the removal of heretics was 


266 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


the duty of the State, solemnly enjoined upon it by “‘God’s 
law.’ Evidently he failed to perceive, as did the Presbyte- 
rians of a later period, that under this ruling he could not con- 
sistently claim exemption from persecution for his own fol- 
lowers. Besides, when did persecutors of any time fail to 
justify their cruelty by appeals to ‘‘God’s law?’”’ Inciden- 
tally for him, but not for us, he discounted extreme pacificism. 
Wars waged in ‘‘the cause of the Church or for the honor of 
Christ,’ were righteously undertaken. Yet he stigmatized 
the maxim that force must be repelled by force as an argu- 
ment of his pet abomination, antichrist. To deduce other- 
wise, he averred, was Mohammedan and not Christian logic. 
He also complained that “the most powerful horses of 
Christ’s chariot’’ forsook the royal road to peace ‘“‘to save 
Pharoah.” His noble declarations that conquest was usu- 
ally wrong, and that the employment of mercenaries, igno- 
rant of the causes for which they fought, was altogether vile, 
are as pleasing to us as they might have been distasteful to 
the Plantagenet princes who endeavored, at the staggering 
expense of one hundred years of conflict, famine and pesti- 
lence, to exercise dominion over both France and England. 
Remove cupidity and ambition, said this great iconoclast 
who had seen the disasters of needless war, and its outbreaks 
would cease. 

Wyclif’s exaltation of monarchy, although essentially a 
reaction against the Roman Curia, sounds strange and un- 
real to the modern ear. Nor is the strangeness diminished 
when we note that his theory drove him to speak with some 
puerility of the deceased Black Prince as especially devoted 
to the Trinity. His tendency to assert the untrammeled 
supremacy of the King in State and Church left nothing for 
a rapacious monarch like Henry VIII to imagine. His plea 
that all clerical endowments should be confiscated for the 
spiritual advantage of the Church would have gained the 
hearty assent of that monarch’s unspeakably greedy nobles; 
whereas they could afford to ignore his caveat that the poor 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAZIVAL IMPERIALISM 267 


ought to be beneficiaries of the confiscation. Once they were 
allowed to appropriate properties to which they had not a 
vestige of right, they used them strictly for themselves 
alone. 

The keynote of his doctrine, that whatever was of impor- 
tance to national welfare came within the reigning monarch’s 
jurisdiction, was simply open absolutism. What more could 
the Tudors or their lords and leeches want for their work of 
absorption, than Wyclif’s overture to assess all Church funds 
and holdings, or his rash statement that it was lawful to pull 
down a Church to build a fortress and to melt chalices to pay 
soldiers? As a matter of fact, most of the monastic spoils 
which Henry’s sycophants and flatterers did not bag were 
squandered on the defense of Calais. How Thomas Crom- 
well and the barons who fattened on sacrilege would have 
exulted in Wyclif’s statement that the folly of pious ances- 
tors who had endowed the Church should be corrected! 
These gross and selfish plunderers would have assented, with 
a grimace, to his qualifications that what really mattered was 
not gold or silver, but the pure worship of God. The robbers 
of the English Guilds inflicted upon the nation’s social life 
the greatest depredation of the Reformation era. It may 
have been that in defense of their thefts they quoted Wyclif’s 
excoriation of the Guilds because of their masses for the dead. 
In truth, this was the reason put forward by those who first 
destroyed them, and then pocketed their wealth. 

The Reformer really advocated the divine right of kings, 
especially against the priesthood. Like Luther, two hundred 
years afterward, what he took from Popes he gave to princes. 
It was useless for him to insist that “all the king’s work 
should be copied from the justice of God.” For Richard IJ, 
Henry VII, his despicable son, and every similarly disposed 
despot since them, this glittering generality would have been 
no more than an invitation to conscienceless autocracy. 
There is not a vestige of proof that contemporary rulers 
heeded Wyclif’s pious admonition to be merciful in their use 


268 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


of unlicensed power. On the contrary, there is abundant 
evidence that, although they did not recognize his main prop- 
ositions, they acted upon them. Yet in spite of his un- 
guarded utterances about the obedience due to the Crown, 
Wyclif had little sympathy with the non-resistance theory 
of the Reformation, so sedulously preached by seventeenth 
century divines. By a scholastic paradox, which he endeav- 
ored to ratify from the writings of Grosseteste, he maintained 
that sometimes the truest obedience lay in resistance. If you 
are inclined to censure his intellectual vagaries, recall that, 
like Hildebrand, he too attempted the impossible. He was 
intent upon the king’s supremacy as against that of the 
Papacy, and upon the preservation of popular rights against 
all supremacy. History afterwards showed how necessary 
it was to redress the balance of the monarchical power which 
he favored, by the execution of Charles I, the banishment of 
his son James, and also by the substitution of ministerial for 
monarchial responsibility. Yet could Wyclif have predicted 
these epoch-making events, he would have been above our 
plane of inquiry. It is in his claim that no institution, what- 
soever its excellent qualities, was immune from dissolution, 
that we should recognize and revere his heroical efforts in be- 
half of progress. He stood almost alone among the thinkers 
of his day for the unity of the realm and against the special 
privileges of clericalism in matters of law. In these respects, 
at any rate, he ceased to agitate against evils at the peril of 
worse evils, and became prophetical. 

With this hasty treatment of Wyclif our review of medizxval 
concepts and of their results can perhaps appropriately end. 
When problems of Church and State were afterwards de- 
bated by Luther, Calvin and other sixteenth century leaders, 
two decisive factors had intervened. The Reformation and 
its progeny in Nationalism had displaced the ideas and poli- 
cies of Roman supremacy. The wealth of the New World in 
the West, and the trade routes that opened up the homes and 
empires of the human race in the far East, gave to vigor- 


THE COLLAPSE OF MEDIAVAL IMPERIALISM 269 


ous and aggressive Commonwealths an unprecedented self- 
sufficiency. With their ascent to power the dreams of a 
world State ended. Colossal figures like Hildebrand, Inno- 
cent III and Charles the Great sank into the statuesque re- 
pose of history. The political theories and ecclesiastical 
ideals of Dante and Wyclif and of their opponents, though 
not of Marsiglio, assumed an archaic aspect. The hymns of 
St. Thomas Aquinas, of St. Bonaventura, of Thomas of. Cel- 
ano, gradually acquired the quaint flavor which accentu- 
ates their quality. Legends of the Arthurian cycle became 
more legendary still. The songs of gay Troubadours lost 
their vivacious charm. Yet I do not envy the individual 
who exults in the downfall of so much majesty and strength, 
or who fails to see in it a solemn warning for the period in 
which we live. For we too have known vile and blood- 
stained monarchs, lying leaders, treacherous diplomatists, 
peoples insatiate for vengeance, or for power and territory. 
The devotion that built the Universities and Cathedrals; the 
spirit that inspired the early Friars and the Dantean epic, 
are scarcely outdone by the best aspirations of our mechan- 
istic age. Although it has a zeal which is more accordant 
with knowledge, and has achieved more useful, if not more 
permanent ends, we who belong to it cannot study, without 
grave memories and reflections, the collapse of Medizvalism 
and its meanings for the modern era. 





KIGHTH LECTURE 
THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 


Ae PRee PORE pms Oe Prognostics told 

Man’s near approach; so in man’s self arise 

August anticipations, symbols, types 

Of a dim splendor ever on before 

In that eternal circle life pursues. 

For men begin to pass their nature’s bound, 

And find new hopes and cares which fast supplant 

Their proper joys and griefs; they grow too great 

For narrow creeds of right and wrong, which fade 

Before the unmeasured thirst for good: while peace 

Rises within them ever more and more. 

Such men are even now upon the earth, 

Serene amid the half-formed creatures round 

Who should be saved by them and joined with them.” 
Rospert Brownine: Paracelsus, Part V. 


EIGHTH LECTURE 
THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 


The need of an Eirenicon between Roman Catholics and Protestants — 
Interregnum between Hildebrand and Luther — Grosseteste, Bishop 
of Lincoln — Religious sources of the Sixteenth Century Revolt — 
Luther at the Diet of Worms — Defeat and abdication of Charles V — 
The decline of Protestant freedom — The supplanting of reformers by 
princes and legalists — Calvin’s intervention — The influence of the 
Renaissance — Erasmus, Colet and More — The Bible as the Rock of 
free nations — Puritanism in Great Britain, Europe and America — 
The Wars of Nationalism — The separatism of Protestantism and its 
recovery of the reasoning mind — The age of revolution — State wor- 
ship and its Nemesis — The higher discipline and obedience. 


WESTERN Civilization has manifold faults and vices, and one 
compensating virtue. It is capable of change and therefore 
of progress; it moves because it lives; it reorganizes its forces 
and accepts their new forms; it is courageous enough to go 
through life’s adventure. The rise of modern Nationalism 
is perhaps the largest verifiable proof of these assertions. As 
a historic movement it is bound up with Protestantism, 
which, in turn, had its original source, not in Church or 
State, but in the hearts and consciences of individual men. 
Both Nationalism and Protestantism are comparatively 
young in the world, and their past or present relations should 
receive that flexibility of treatment which best suits their 
youth. Such treatment is seldom given them by their ardent 
defenders. However sincere and amenable, they are apt to 
express a belief in their principles which is not always war- 
ranted by past experience. Since persons seldom outgrow 
their inherited ideas or special callings, they may be depended 
upon to deduce what they desire, not from facts, but from a 

273 


274 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


tangle of generalities. In these habits they resemble the 
detective Bernadet in one of Jules Claretie’s stories, who sup- 
posed a picture reflected in the murdered victim’s eye was 
the actual assassin himself, and narrowly escaped responsi- 
bility for a serious miscarriage of justice. So the people who 
imagine that the Reformation was a sudden revolt against 
decadent Medizevalism, which was miraculously led by the 
son of a German peasant, and had no connection with what 
went before it, miss the true interpretation of a world-shaping 
event. 

Protestant partisans formerly accounted for the Lutheran 
upheaval by painting the previous régime absolutely black; 
nothing was grey or neutral, and this, despite the fact that 
had its flagrancies been so intolerable, they would have in- 
sured their own extermination. The Church of the age was 
caricatured. ‘‘A superficial account of the traffic in indul- 
gences, and a rough and ready assumption which even Kést- 
lin makes that the darkness was greatest just before the 
dawn,’’ were the crude overtures to a revolt that shook all 
Christian States. Their difficulty was that they proved too 
much, for conditions were no betterand no worse imme- 
diately before the revolt than they had been for centuries, and 
German complaints of papal tyranny go back to Hildegard. 
On the other hand, the idea of National Churches as the par- 
ents of Nationalism has often been misrepresented by those 
papal partisans who seldom, if ever, judged it by a fair com- 
parison with its alternative. They ignored the pivotal truth 
that the concept of a Church, universal in organization 
but autocratic in government, had failed because of its ina- 
bility to make room for the two most powerful forces in the 
modern world — those of freedom and of patriotism. These 
forces have their defects. They need the instruction and the 
discipline which it is the duty of the Church to impart. But 
they must not be airily dismissed from the sixteenth and pre- 
ceding centuries by those who attempt to nullify history in 

1Cf. ‘‘ Encyclopedia Britannica,’’ (Eleventh Edition), Vol. XXIII, p. 4 ff. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 275 


ascribing to Medizvalism a fictitious ecclesiastical or im- 
perial rectitude. 

The student who does not know the best which has been 
thought and said by unbiased authorities on such issues is 
also fairly sure to set an undue value upon some conventional 
ideas of the Reformation period. These ideas need a thor- 
ough revision because of their mischief making extrava- 
gance. They excite hate and calumny; create religious preju- 
dice, and sadden every informed lover of his fellow men. 
Nor will the separations and jealousies that weaken Chris- 
tianity be removed until the apparently exhaustless credu- 
lity of factionists is abandoned by common consent. If, 
then, we are to deal justly with an era in which many noble 
loves were inspired, and many cheated loves were turned to 
utter loathing, not a few popular conceptions about it will 
have to be sanitated. Chronicles that unduly embellish its 
events must be used discriminatingly. Men who own allegi- 
ance to one Lord must cease to speak and write as though 
they had nothing but animosities to gratify, or selfish inter- 
ests to advance. The healing of the Church and the settling 
of the world depend upon a more eirenic disposition in the 
two great branches of Western Christianity. The commend- 
able aspirations of Nationalism, the moral ideals that should 
be supported, the dreams of betterment by our finer spirits, 
and the practical needs which political leaders almost de- 
spair of meeting, cannot be materially helped by a contentious 
Christianity. If its Gospel is to become more social, collec- 
tive and international; if it is to embrace, as never before, the 
whole life of mankind, emphatically it must be inspired by 
the love which St. Paul prayed ‘‘may abound yet more and 
more in knowledge and all discernment; . . . being filled with 
the fruits of righteousness, which are through Jesus Christ, 
unto the glory and praise of God ”’ ? 

In this temper we would now proceed to survey briefly 
the formative elements of the modern Church and State, 

2 Philippians I. 9 ff. 


276 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


which were active from the reign of Hildebrand to the 
birth of Luther in 1488. Life was anything but stagnant 
during that period. Its associations were seldom a fixed 
quantity, and their changes were traceable to the fact that 
some rulers were as pilots asleep in the storm, while others 
seemed able to still it for a space. As we have seen already, 
the supremacy of the Holy See was formerly advocated by 
many of the best minds of the interregnum. Convinced that 
the safety of the world and of the Church lay in her connec- 
tion with Rome, they endeavored to guard her against secu- 
lar interferences with her freedom or her reform. Among 
those thus convinced was Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lin- 
coln, Chancellor of Oxford, and one of the foremost English- 
men of his own or of any other day. As energetic as Luther, 
Grosseteste went beyond him in statesmanship, and often 
attained an elevation of conduct inaccessible to reason alone. 
The genuineness of his “sharp epistle”’ to Master Innocent, 
the representative of Pope Innocent IV in England, can- 
not be seriously questioned. A manuscript copy of the cor- 
respondence is kept at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 
Its fierce blast against the imposing pretensions of the Holy 
See was heard again in Grosseteste’s Memorandum, pre- 
sented at Lyons in 1250. 

This public-spirited Bishop has been described by Mat- 
thew of Paris as “the chastiser of prelates, the corrector of 
monks, the director of priests, the trainer of clerks, the sup- 
porter of scholars, the preacher of the people, the persecutor 
of the unchaste, the diligent student of the Scriptures, the 
open confuter of the Popes, the hammerer and despiser of the 
Romans.” * The description excites anticipations which the 
reading of the Memorandum satisfies. It praised Cathol- 
icism, but also suggested Nationalism, and while asserting the 
true function and necessity of the Holy See, defined the limits 
of its authority. The reigning Pontiff was censured for creat- 
ing a needless crisis in the Church, and the theory of Anglican 

3 Cf. A. L. Smith: ‘‘ Church and State in the Middle Ages,’’ p. 102. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 277 


independence was foreshadowed against papal tactlessness and 
violence. But Grosseteste’s rebukes and warnings passed 
almost unheeded ata moment when many enormous wrongs 
crippled society. The spiritual prospects of Europe darkened 
as the great Prelate came to the close of his life. He died pre- 
dicting doom for the Catholicism which he had loved too 
deeply for his own peace, and upon which his wisdom and 
piety seemed to have been wasted. His complaints, and those 
of contemporaries, were the tidal movements of an otherwise 
stagnant sea which preceded the inundation that two hun- 
dred years later swallowed up the last vestiges of Medieval 
Imperialism. 

One is curious to know what were the ideas of the laymen, 
priests, merchants, guildsmen and peasants of Grosseteste’s 
age. In the mass they seem to have been indifferent to the 
quarrels of their temporal and spiritual overseers. Prayers 
were said, crops were sown and reaped, homes kept up, and 
the daily round of duty done by men and women whose re- 
ligion was an admixture of simple trust, sound sense, primi- 
tive notions and emotional impulses. They often set a 
peaceful example to those militant superiors who fought to 
the last for their philosophic or political theories. The re- 
ception they gave to the earlier Franciscans showed with 
what readiness the plain people heard a purer Gospel. But 
since for two hundred years few of them knew whether the 
Vicar of Christ lived in Italy or France, the comfort and 
strength of their faith were denied them; and the denial proved 
exceedingly detrimental to papal authority. To damage the 
essentials of a national religion is always a serious offense. 
To damage those essentials among the medieval peoples, 
whose vices and virtues were in closest proximity, within 
whom were the ageless contentions of barbarism and civilized 
living, made the offense malignant. 

Here and there the customary opposites of the period as- 


4Cf. G. G. Coulton: ‘‘ The Plain Man’s Religion in the Middle Ages,”’ 
in ‘‘ The Hibbert Journal,’’ April, 1916. p. 592 ff. 


278 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


serted themselves, and opinions were advanced which showed 
that all was not so well with the Church as her defenders 
claimed. The supposed harmony and solidity of pre-Ref- 
ormation society were not without their accusers; its ‘‘wanton 
disruption” is not to be ascribed solely to the ‘‘inex- 
plicable Luther.” For if the two centuries before he ap- 
peared were often mired in a morass of corruptions, they 
were also certainly stirred by ‘‘prologues to the omen coming 
on.”’ It was the period of Savonarola as well as of Machia- 
velli; of declining interest in creeds, and of a heightening 
realization of the truths above all creeds. The Revival of 
Learning belonged to it, and so did a shameless recrudescence 
of follies and superstitions. It saw the discovery of the New 
World, and also the persecutions of the Holy Office; the con- 
quest of the Moors in Spain, and also the triumph of Islam 
at Gallipoli; the first great Catholic Missions to heathen 
peoples, and also the renewal of cultured paganism in high 
ecclesiastics. In it the growth of thought and action suf- 
fered from the past; the future struggled to escape from the 
present. ‘These oppositions generated in turn the condi- 
tions in which rebellion could not only prosper, but be warmly 
indorsed by one half the monarchs of Europe. 


II 


Although individuals, and often large groups, even given 
regions, had rejected the Roman authority, yet until the 
burning of the Canon Law by Luther, no temporal prince had 
publicly forsaken the international Church-State of which 
the Pontiff was the Head. After the Reformer’s act, kings 
and their agents who accepted it furthered its results. 
They declared that the temporal power which had been or- 
dained of God for ‘‘the chastisement of the wicked and the 
protection of the good” should now be permitted to exercise 
its functions ‘“‘unhampered throughout the whole Christian 
body without respect to persons.’ Its subjection to the papal 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 279 


rule was ended with a suddenness which revealed the bitter 
resentment the rule had engendered. Such was the final 
outcome of the conflict between the Empire and the Papacy, 
and the Protestant Revolt is to be understood in the light of 
that conflict. The medieval relations between Church and 
Empire, the abuses that impaired them, the friction to which 
Popes like Innocent IV, Boniface VIII and John XXII added 
their full share, the absolutist theories of rulers that have 
since dug the graves of empires, were alike parts of the pro- 
cess which made Nationalism the political ideal of modern 
Europe and America.° 

The separation of the State from churchly control was 
given a free hand, for which the differences between Eastern 
and Western Christianity, not yet discussed here, furnished a 
historic precedent. After the declining Roman Empire found 
it necessary to have two capitals, Byzantium and Rome, the 
varying tendencies of their respective subjects took shape in 
a division between the Eastern and Western Churches. The 
division did not arise from any real schism in the Faith, but 
from opposing conceptions of civil authority which were 
accentuated by diversities of language and of modes of 
thought. ‘‘The State continued to exist in the East after it 
had fallen in the West. The Church went with it, and con- 
tinued to present the Faith in the old forms with which the 
Eastern peoples were familiar. In the West, where the old 
State had disappeared, the Church stepped into its place, 
and maintained the appearance of a religious Commonwealth, 
whose civil affairs were administered by local rulers. 
Its innovations were rejected as unlawful by the more settled 
and conservative East. The consequent separation destroyed 
the idea of one Church united in outward organization. 
There was still one Church, united essentially in one Faith, 
and setting it forth in the world; but it differed about the 
mode of government and the method of teaching.” ® It 


5 Cf. ‘‘ Encyclopeedia Britannica,’’ (Eleventh Edition), Vol. XXIII. p. 4 ff. 
6 Bishop Mandell Creighton: ‘‘ The Church and the Nation,” p. 209 f. 


280 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


is interesting to note that Russia, where the Eastern Church 
gained national dignity, preserved the Byzantine tradition 
that in all matters outside the sphere of dogma the ecclesias- 
tical was subordinate to the civil power. ‘There were lapses 
from this position, however, and to prevent their recurrence 
Peter the Great wiped out the Patriarchate for the time being, 
and entrusted the administration of the Church to a Synod 
entirely dependent upon the imperial government.’ 

The most vigorous protests obviously remain negative if 
they only show how deeply embedded men and institutions 
are in their erroneous methods and policies. From this view- 
point, the mere mobilization of Church and State in some new 
forms does not present the constructive side of the Reforma- 
tion. True, the Church had long ceased to be Catholic before 
Luther renounced the Roman supremacy, and her Eastern 
branch was always an indirect reminder of the neglected 
rights of Councils and of nations. But without those spiritual 
principles by which all human movements live, the sixteenth 
century revolt could scarcely have survived. Leaders soon 
cease to lead, rallying cries are soon hushed, procrustean 
moralities soon resume their limitations, unless a united pur- 
pose, as strong in reason as it is in righteousness, animates 
reforms and reformers. Nothing purely secular stands alone; 
it is either built into the divine dwellingplace of the spirit, 
or fated to perish. 

Those permanent elements of every age, which are its in- 
tellectual, ethical and religious forces, lived in ‘‘the honest 
monk”? whom Cardinal Cajetan summoned before him, but 
summarily dismissed as “‘a beast with deep-set eyes, and 
strange speculations in his head.” It has been said that 
there was method in Luther’s seeming madness, because he 
made his onslaught on the Pope and the Curia when it coin- 
cided with the political ambitions of the northern nations. 
But though his earlier legal studies had prepared him to sym- 
pathize with the German Church and Empire against Roman 

7 Cf. Walter F. Adeney: ‘“‘ The Greek and Eastern Churches,”’ p. 355 ff 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 281 


ageressions, for some years before he nailed his famous theses 
to the Church doors at Wittenberg, external matters of any 
kind were banished from him by his spiritual perplexities. He 
sought in Holy Scripture a solution of the engrossing prob- 
lem of man’s personal salvation. So far back as 1511 he had 
visited Rome in the course of his quest, but he found little 
in the Holy City’s ritualistic pomp and spiritual poverty to 
assist him in ascertaining how the individual can be just be- 
fore his Maker. On his return to the University at Witten- 
berg, where he became a Doctor of Biblical Theology, he be- 
gan to preach “Justification by Faith” throughout Saxony. 

This preaching, novel to an age deprived of evangelical 
instruction, collided head on with the entrenched system and 
its sacerdotal castes. Tetzel, a Dominican monk, who had 
been commissioned by Pope Leo X to travel throughout Ger- 
many selling indulgences in the form of stamped tickets at 
the rate of a few ducats for the graver sins, furnished the 
occasion for Luther’s defiance. But its real source lay in his 
recent and more personal and immediate experiences of re- 
ligion. To them we must look, and to the writings of St. 
Paul, for the origin of German Protestantism. Had the Re- 
former not pondered over his own inward difficulties, he 
would never have spoken as he did; had he not absorbed the 
teaching of the letters to the Romans and the Galatians, he 
would scarcely have known what to say. Once more those 
who belittle theological controversy should recall that in its 
crucible modern Nationalism was fused. For good or ill, its 
unforeseen consequences sprang from Luther’s interpretation 
of that Pauline doctrine which had been shaped for Chris- 
tian purposes by the legal ideas of Rome. 

Luther’s truce with the Holy See was skillfully arranged 
by Cardinal Miltitz, only to be broken by Dr. Eck, who chal- 
lenged the rebel to a public disputation on Indulgences at 
Leipzig. It could have been no more than a transient peace 
unless he surrendered the doctrine of ‘‘ Justification by Faith,” 
and this he would not do. Consequently he had to encounter 


282 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Charles V at Worms in April, 1521. This young prince ruled 
a twofold domain which included Spain and Portugal on the 
one side; and on the other, Austria, Burgundy and the Neth- 
‘erlands. As against the strength of his Empire, which ap- 
peared more imposing than it actually was, Luther had only 
the assurance of his personal belief and his conscience, and 
the support of his German friends. Naturally enough, 
Charles was intent on religious unity as the basis of political 
unity, and he announced that to stay the plague of these 
heretical opinions, he would peril ‘‘kingdoms, treasures and 
friends; body and blood, and life and soul.’”” Emperor and 
Pope, sworn foes in nearly everything else, were united 
against the rising rebellion that centered in the new National- 
ism. On the very day when the imperial edict against Luther 
was to be signed, May 8, 1521, a private treaty was concluded 
between Charles and Leo X, in which the latter agreed to 
help the Emperor to drive his brilliant rival, Francis I, King 
of France, out of Milan and Genoa.? Henry VIII of England, 
another monarch then in the prime of life, who added little 
to the credit or tranquility of the age, rushed into print to 
vanquish the daring schismatic, and was decked by Leo with 
the proud title, ‘‘ Defender of the Faith;”’ a distinction which 
Henry’s subsequent behavior did very little to adorn. ® 
What could have sustained Luther against these potentates, 
despite the help he received from Frederick of Saxony and 
like-minded men, had he not been fortified by the power 
higher than that of earth, which finally turns the scale for 
truth and justice against fearful odds? 

Following a series of negotiations and skirmishes, in 1555 
the Diet of Augsburg formally enacted the religious settle- 
ment which is still the basis of the German policy. It wasa 
compromise between the defeated Charles and his Protes- 

8 For a comprehensive discussion of these episodes see A. Taylor Innes: 
‘““Church and State,’”’ p. 111 ff. 

°Cf. ‘‘Henry VIII”? by James Gairdner in ‘‘ The Cambridge Modern 


History,’”’ Vol. II. Chapter XIII; Preserved Smith: ‘‘ The Age of the Ref- 
ormation,’’ Chapter VI. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 283 


tant foes, which stipulated that the supreme Civil Power in 
each nation must choose whether the State religion should be 
Roman or Lutheran. Thus the obscure monk whom Leo 
hastily derided humilated Pope and Emperor. Charles now 
resigned his burdensome regalities and retired to the lovely 
retreat at Yuste. There, after muddling the fortunes of half 
a dozen countries, he spent the last two years of his life in 
making clocks. He never ceased to regret that he had not 
violated the safe conduct which brought the Reformer to 
Worms, for he imagined he could have rescued the Church 
from schism by repeating in Luther’s case the infamous be- 
trayal of Huss at Constance. 

None could plunge into the tumult and deviltry of Europe’s 
soul, as Luther did, and hope to escape its contagion. ‘‘Nor 
must it be forgotten that no great leader ever flung about 
wild words in such a reckless way.” 1° This was evidenced by 
his conduct during the Peasants’ War in 1525, waged by 
them to throw off an oppressive feudal yoke from which there 
was no appeal save by force. At first Luther proposed arbi- 
tration, but when his proposal fell through, and the trouble 
spread, his innate conservatism reasserted itself. He de- 
nounced the insurrection with disgraceful vehemence, and 
urged the suppression of the helpless peasants whom their 
rulers slaughtered wholesale. The Anabaptists also aroused 
his indignation, though they but extended his favorite prin- 
ciple of individualism; and many of them only asked for the 
liberty of conscience which had been asserted by Luther 
himself in his conflict with the papal authorities. The leaders 
of the sect ran to fanatical extremes in their plea that the 
believer’s inner light was his sole guide, requiring neither 
divine revelation nor human inventions for its maintenance; 


10Cf, T. M. Lindsay: ‘‘ A History of the Reformation,’’ Vol. I, p. 326 ff; 
A. C. McGiffert: ‘* Martin Luther, the Man and His Work’’; Preserved 
Smith: ‘‘The Life and Letters of Martin Luther’; “‘ The Cambridge 
Modern History,’ Vol. Il. “‘ The Reformation,’ Chapters IV., V., VI.; 
Preserved Smith: ‘‘ The Age of the Reformation,’? Chapter II.; H. O. 
Taylor: ‘‘ Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth Century,” Vol. I. 
Chapters VIII. and IX, 


284 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


and Romanists and Lutherans combined against these schis- 
matics as enemies of order. One of their chief offenses 
was the precept that no Christian should accept political office, 
or use the sword, or engage in armed conflict. The merciless 
treatment dealt out to them showed that the older purer mo- 
tives of the Lutheran Reformation were exhausted, and 
that a new orientation had robbed it of much moral 
energy. A general reaction against liberty had set in; 
toleration was tabooed; and oppressive practices were es- 
tablished which existed until very recently in German rule. 


Ill 


At first Luther declared that Christians had the right to 
test every theory for themselves, and to believe in all matters 
as their experience of God’s forgiving love suggested. Later, 
he had so far retreated as to say that Zwingli, who strongly 
resisted State interference in Church affairs, was no Chris- 
tian. He advised force against unsound doctrine. Preachers 
who opposed him were to be displaced, and heretics punished 
for their profanity. The Church was made the helot of the 
State in his intolerant claim that the latter must judge who 
were heretical; a subjection, be it noted, that the Holy See 
never made.!! The prophet of religious reform had become the 
agent of political power. Freedom of conscience and Church 
independence were his watchwords from 1521 to 1525. After 
this date he invoked the secular arm against the Papists, 
and urged that the sword had been committed to princes that 
they might penalize the ungodly. The Elector Frederick 
reminded the irate Reformer of his previous teaching that 
believers should rely solely upon the Sacred Word. But he 
and his associates, separated from Western Christianity, and 
from the bulk of their fellow countrymen, became the instru- 
ments of German princes, and paid for their support with 
servility and truckling. Even Melanchthon, without whose 
colder genius Luther could not have received the support of 

11Cf. Lord Acton: ‘‘ History of Freedom,’ p. 155 ff. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 285 


the Universities, admitted that the decrees of the Lutheran 
Church were merely platonic utterances until ratified by 
political rulers. The weakness of Lutheranism lay in the 
fact that it adopted as its motto, ‘“ Cujus regio,” thus consti- 
tuting the political basis of the State the basis of religion, 
and making the religion of any province dependent upon the 
prince. ‘This has practically been the basis of German his- 
tory. Indeed, the exaggeration of the State, which has 
always been the weakness of Germany, manifested itself 
as far back as the Reformation, and was the actual cause 
of so many internal divisions. Toleration became a polit- 
ical matter from the first, but owing to the theory of the 
State, it scarcely existed until its lesson was driven in by 
the Thirty Years’ War. 

Nevertheless the principles of the Augsburg Confession 
of 1530, and of other Protestant Confessions embodying 
similar views of Church and State, were landmarks in the 
history of Nationalism which could not be removed. The one 
from which I quote was drafted by Melanchthon under Lu- 
ther’s personal direction: ‘‘Concerning civil affairs, our 
churches teach that civil ordinances, when they are lawful, 
are good works of God, and that it is right for Christians to 
take the magistrate’s office. . . . Christians, therefore must 
of necessity obey their governors and laws, save only when 
they command to sin, for then they must obey God rather 
than men. . . . We are compelled, therefore, for the sat- 
isfaction of men’s consciences, to set forth the distinction 
between the ecclesiastical power and the power of the sword. 
We have no doubt, that both of them because of God’s com- 
mandment, are dutifully to be reverenced and honored, as 
God’s greatest blessings on this earth. But our view as to 
the distinction is this: The power of the keys, or the power of 
bishops, is, according to the gospels, a power or commission 
from God of preaching the gospel, of remitting and retaining 
sins, and of administering the sacraments. . . . Seeing, 
then, that the ecclesiastical power deals with things eternal, 


286 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


and is exercised only by the ministry of the word, it does not 
interfere with (non impedit) the administration of civil affairs, 
any more than does the art of singing. For the administra- 
tion of civil affairs has to deal with other matters than the 
gospel deals with. The magistrate does not defend men’s 
minds, but their bodies, and other corporeal things, against 
manifest injuries; and he coerces men by the sword and+«by 
corporal pains, in order to uphold civil justice and peace. 
Wherefore the ecclesiastical and civil powers are not to be 
confounded. The ecclesiastical has its own command to 
preach the gospel and to administer the sacraments. Let it 
not intrude into the office of another than itself; let it not 
transfer the kingdoms of this world; let it not abrogate the 
magistrate’s laws; let it not withdraw from them lawful obed- 
ience; let it not hinder judicial decisions touching any civil 
ordinances cr contracts; let it not prescribe laws to the magis- 
trates as to the form of the Commonwealth. In this way do 
our teachers distinguish the functions of either power, while 
they exhort men to hold both in honor, and to acknowledge 
both as the gift and blessing of God.” ” 

Although this, the first Protestant definition of the sep- 
arated provinces of Church and State, clearly defined their 
independent yet codrdinate functions, its careful reading 
arouses mingled feelings. The advance it made in liberal 
ideas was really a return to those of the early Church, and of 
the medieval period before Hildebrand’s Pontificate. It re- 
linquished in theory the prosecution of heretics by the State, 
but it was without a hint of the wider toleration which nearly 
all churches have been reluctant to admit. In it are the 
germs of that deified Nationalism which is now everywhere 
suspect, and which has made other thinkers besides Coler- 
idge differentiate a national Church from a Christian Church. 
There is nothing, as Dr. Richard Roberts remarks, in the 
principle of nationality to make it intrinsically exclusive.” 


12 Cf. A. Taylor Innes: ‘‘ Church and State,’”’ p. 128 f. 
13“ The Church and the Commonwealth,”’ p. 61 f. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 287 


On the contrary, there in no reason why it should not become 
an integral unit in the codperative catholicity of an undivided 
Church. But the identification of the spiritual interests of 
Protestantism with those of secular Monarchs and their 
ministers was subversive of its catholicity, and degraded it 
to the level of a worldly corporation. It lacked that spirit 
in Which rivalries are harmonized, and therefore could not 
avoid the burdens of material policy. That Luther had his 
qualms about this possible outcome is shown by his treatise, 
“On the Secular State and How Far Obedience is Due to It,”’ 
in which he insisted that ‘God cannot and will not allow 
any one but Himself to rule the soul,’ and that when the 
temporal authority encroaches upon the spiritual domain it is 
impotent. The Emperor governs body, gold and good; the 
heart is reserved to the control of its Creator. But the Re- 
former made concessions to political expedience which con- 
firmed the previous determination of the German princes 
to hang and burn for heresy, and to disregard minority 
rights. 

Lord Acton asserts that by regarding the protection of or- 
thodoxy as their principal business, they put out of sight the 
more immediate duties of government, and caused the politi- 
cal objects of the State to disappear behind its religious ends. 
The sacred ichor of pontifical blood began to run in their 
veins. Their government was judged, in the eyes of Protest- 
ants, by its fidelity to the Protestant Church. ‘“‘If it fulfilled 
these requirements, no other complaints against it could be en- 
tertained. A tyrannical prince could not be resisted if he was 
orthodox; a just prince could be dethroned if he failed in the 
more essential condition of faith. In this way Protestantism 
became favorable at once to despotism and to revolution, 
and was ever ready to sacrifice good government to its own 
interests. It subverted monarchies, and, at the same time, 
denounced those who, for political causes, sought their sub- 
version; but though the monarchies it subverted were some- 
times tyrannical, and the seditions it prevented sometimes 


288 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


revolutionary, the order it defended or sought to establish was 
never legitimate and free, for it was always invested with the 
function of religious proselytism, and with the obligation of 
removing every traditional, social, or political right or power 
which could oppose the discharge of that essential duty.” 

The religious values of the Reformation were materially 
reduced by the conduct of its divines at Augsburg. They 
ceased to be the shepherds of the people. The energy and 
moderation with which they had proposed reforms that were 
afterwards demonstrated as necessary by the Council of 
Trent, seemed to desert them in the task of governing the 
insurgent Churches. If the institutions of the fifteenth cen- 
tury were no longer adequate for the life of the Spirit, those 
of the sixteenth likewise began to reveal their inadequacy. A 
disproportionate intellectual and political progress was pro- 
cured at the cost of spiritual progress. Prophets and re- 
formers made way for legalists and publicists; vital issues 
were deferred to the material prosperity of the State. Hence 
in the sentiment of Nationalism which it evoked there was 
nothing original. It was one of the main tenets of Lu- 
ther’s Reformation, out of which old history and new ideas 
produced Nationalism’s dominating force. Viscount Morley 
indicts it for its ‘oppression, intolerable economic disorder, 
governmental failure, senseless wars, senseless ambition, and 
the misery that was their baleful fruit.” Nationality ‘‘first 
inflamed visionaries, then it grew potent with the multitudes, 
who thought the foreigner the author of their wretchedness. 
Thus Nationality went through all the stages. From in- 
stinct it became idea; from idea abstract principle; then fer- 
vid prepossession; ending where it is today, in dogma, 
whether accepted or evaded.” If Canossa warns us against 
the evils of unlicensed Imperialism, surely the annals of the 
last four centuries warn us against the evils of unlicensed 
Nationalism. Both theories of government displaced the bal- 


14 History of Freedom,”’ p. 181. 
15 ‘* Politics and History,’’ p. 46 f. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 289 


ance between the visible and the invisible realms; and, by so 
doing, jeopardized the entire structure of society. 

Luther saved his movement by sacrificing one of its chief 
contentions. Calvin, as we have already said, took com- 
mand of its bewildered forces, and directed them in behalf of 
Protestant Nationalism. There was need of his intervention, 
for Anabaptist and Zwinglian doctrines, and those who as- 
sumed arms in their defense, might have disorganized Protes- 
tantism at the start but for his masterly counter strokes. His 
theory of the State, which has been mentioned in an 
earlier lecture, implied rather than defined its relation with 
the Church. The theocratic conception of government which 
prompted all his ideas was republican rather than democratic 
in nature, for Calvin himself was not disposed to trust the 
multitudes.46 Although princes and nobles came to his as- 
sistance, he depended chiefly upon the middle classes: the 
burghers, merchants, yeomen and artisans of the larger 
cities and towns which were usually the centers of municipal 
freedom, and of the rights of the growing State. History 
shows that one class is continually merging into another and 
inheriting its power and its apprehensions. So, as the world 
goes, there will probably be a middle class of some sort in all 
social formations.” But this concession should not debar 
us from recognizing that the particular middle class which 
imbibed Calvinism, from the seventeenth century to the 
present time, has perhaps accomplished more for Democ- 
racy than either the aristocracies or the proletariat. 


IV 


The twilight dawn of Protestantism could not have broken, 
nor would it have broadened into the noon of Nationalism, 
save for the Renaissance which began approximately in 1485. 
From an inclusive viewpoint, the Reformation, whether Lu- 


16 ‘* Cf, Viscount Bryce: ‘‘ Modern Democracies,”’ Vol. I. p. 84 ff. 
17 Cf. John Corbin: ‘‘ The Return of the Middle Class.”’ 


290 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


theran, Genevan or Anglican in kind, was only another aspect 
of the Renaissance. But ‘‘without Christianity, the Renais- 
sance itself would have been impossible.” *% Speculations 
that seldom passed from literary into actual history attended 
the Revival of Learning. Yet behind their discontent and 
intellectual ingenuity were settled purposes for social regen- 
eration, that have profoundly influenced the nations of north- 
ern Europe and America. The benefits of democratic Na- 
tionalism in those nations have been the prelude to pres- 
ent individual self-determination. 

So the cycle is completed between the fifteenth century 
and our own; and not a few thinkers wonder whether we can 
reasonably expect a second Renaissance as the ultimate se- 
quel of the first. Be this as it shall prove, we cannot do jus- 
tice here to a movement of general exaltation like that of the 
Renaissance proper. It achieved advances in every sphere 
which in their turn made possible the modern world of poli- 
tics, literature, art, science and learning. The abstractions 
of the Scholastics, and the religious mysteries of the Church 
palled upon the Humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries. In Italy, and later in France, they magnified the 
pre-Christian past, and gave prominence to its philosophical 
and artistic forms. Theology became the Cinderella of the 
classics; the study of Greek in Plato and in the New Testa- 
ment discounted dogma and instilled a practical or a critical 
attitude. In England the native dislike for speculation has 
since given rise to a new short catechism: ‘What is mind?” 
“No Matter.” “What is Matter?’ “Never Mind.’”’ Men 
returned to ancient ways by restoring to the Bible its apos- 
tolic honor. Their love of religion, as well as of intellectual 
liberty, made them eager to place popular versions of the 
Scriptures in the hands of the people. They coveted truth 
more than they coveted art, and were intent upon a civilized 
freedom as the source of culture and social progress. 

These were the salient characteristics of the New Learning 

18 Miguel de Unamuno: ‘‘The Tragic Sense of Life,’’ p. 112. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 291 


which had vital relations with the rise of nations. Its paint- 
ers, architects, romancers, poets; its splendid or decrepit 
dreamers; its immoral braveries, bombastic rhetoric and pa- 
gan proclivities, do not directly concern us. It was the ethical 
and not the esthetic strength of the Renaissance that helped 
to destroy the ancient seats of political power, and to trans- 
fer their sovereignty to the Northern peoples. Erasmus 
showed the movement’s excellence when he resolved to bring 
the documents of historic Christianity into line with those 
of classic authors, and to make a beginning with the Greek 
text of the New Testament, and a new Latin translation of it, 
in parallel columns. This work he proposed to call the 
“Novum Instrumentum,”’ and such it was in many and bene- 
ficial ways. Mark Pattison asserts that, “‘it contributed to 
the liberation of the human mind from the thraldom of the 
clergy more than all the uproar and rage of Luther’s many 
pamphlets. . . . It revealed the fact that the Vulgate, the 
Bible of the Church, was not only a second-hand document, 
but, in many places an erroneous document. A shock was 
thus given to the credit of the clergy in the province of liter- 
ature, equal to that given in the provinces of science by the 
astronomical discoveries of the seventeenth century.” 
In the preface to his translation Erasmus wrote: ‘‘I wish that 
even the weakest women should read the Gospel — should 
read the Epistles of Paul. And I wish these were translated 
into all languages, so that they might be read and understood, 
not only by Scots and Irishmen, but also by Turks and Sara- 
cens. It may be that they might be ridiculed by many, but 
some would take them to heart. I long that the husbandman 
should sing portions of them to himself as he follows the 
plough, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his 
shuttle, that the traveller should beguile with their stories the 
tedium of his journey.” 7° 

Some writers insist that what is wanted to deliver modern 


19Cf, ‘London Times Literary Supplement,’’ November 23, 1922, p. 754. 
2 Cf, T. M. Lindsay: ‘‘A History of the Reformation,” Vol. I. p. 174. 


292 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


States from their present distresses is not values but explana- 
tions, not aspirations and good wishes, but a larger control 
of human conditions. Others inform us that these conditions 
are already fully subject to human control, and speak as 
though the constituents of a reasonable life were always the 
same and always available. They contend, in the Socratic 
manner, that the lesson of life has been learned by the wise, 
and needs but to be taught by them to the obstinate and the 
ignorant. But the history of Nationalism testifies that the 
moral significance of society is made by its spiritual readjust- 
ments. This is plainly seen in the movements of the six- 
teenth century. They were not sheltered in safe harbors. 
The tempestuous elements which always surround human life 
were then lashed to fury. At intervals the hurricane seemed 
to drive Humanists, Catholics and Protestants, none knew 
whither. The great anchorage of the Reformation Age was 
in the Bible. No individual or party intent on change helped 
men and women to outride the storm as did this ancient liter- 
ature. It connected their pressing necessities with its multi- 
form sources of relief, including within its ministry every 
problem and aspect of human existence. 

Monarchs who exercised by “divine right”’ an unquestioned 
authority hitherto acceded to none save Popes and Em- 
perors, and statesmen who endeavored to reconcile that 
“right”? with the public welfare, alike resorted to the Bible 
for their support. Rival Popes during the Avignon Schism, 
and reformers and traditionalists of the sixteenth century, 
constituted the Book their final Court of Appeal. Claims 
for freedom of speculation made by Catholics or Protestants, 
Jesuits or Puritans, against rulers of a creed different than 
their own, were allowed or disallowed on Scriptural grounds. 
Not only the sale of indulgences or the oppressions and im- 
moralities of the clergy, but the wrongs wrought by princes 
and pastors of the Reformed Faith were liable to impeach- 
ments framed upon the word of Prophets and Apostles. The 
growing individualism of the roadustrial and merchant classes, 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 293 


which displeased the fuedalistic class, was judged by Scrip- 
tural teachings. Unendurable governmental machines were 
smashed by patriots who quoted the Bible as their warrant 
for war upon tyrants. It stood in the wide breach made 
by the removal of the papal federalism of the Middle Ages. 
Upon it the builders of nations erected their defenses, and by 
its standards they were approved or condemned. 

Sociologists tell us that the historical tendency to organize 
the human race into political States is actuated by blood, 
by tradition, and in a general sense, by culture. Doubtless 
these are among the causes of Nationalism, but its safety and 
continuance were derived from the Sacred Oracles. Where 
they were honored, States rose to a higher plane of civiliza- 
tion; where they were little known, States sank to a lower 
plane. The subordinate nations, which, in a vaguer definition, 
consisted in an external government of different peoples, 
without community of habit or belief, were advantaged by the 
principles such government obtained from the Bible. Brit- 
ons, Colonial Americans and Hollanders might have lost 
their acquired territories but for its counsel and guidance. 
Whatever the condition of heterogeneous racial elements 
under one rule may be today, unquestionably their polit- 
ical, economic and moral interests have been purified by Bib- 
lical doctrines. 

Language is one of the chief cohesive forces of Nationalism 
which the Bible has ennobled. Indeed, its translations are 
usually the greatest monuments of the speech of civilized 
States. That of Luther rejuvenated the German people 
through their language. The Evangelicalism traceable to 
Wyclif’s translation of the whole Bible which he was the first 
to make into English, though stamped out in his own land, 
took Bohemia by storm. The King James Version of 1611 
has gained deserved supremacy in the English language, 
and in the English-speaking realm of letters. Its sayings are 
bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, woven into the moral 
fibre of our domestic and national being. John Richard 


294 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Green, in his well known tribute to its sway over Puritanism, 
speaks of the Book as the light and guide of all Englishmen: 
the source of their ideals, customs, religious and secular be- 
liefs, and of every mode of their self-expression. Their re- 
ligious experiences, like those of the Scots, the Dutch, the 
Swiss, the Huguenot French, and the Scandinavian nations, 
owed their strength and fire to the deliverance effected in 
them by the Bible. It enjoyed a limited monarchy before 
the sixteenth century, after which it rose to universal empirs 
in Protestant Europe and America. Current theories of 
Church and State were dictated by its precepts; politics be- 
came its reaction. For one problem which it created, it 
solved a thousand; for one defeat it mcurred, it gained num- 
berless victories. Nationalism, in its gradual ascent toward 
democracy, has to admit that at every stage the sacred writers 
of the Orient have been the pathfinders for their more adven- 
turous brothers of the West. They opened the magic case- 
ments looking toward the East of which Bunyan dreamed. 
Their ‘measured beat of passion in restraint,” musical 
rhythm, picturesque imagery and limitless freedom of moral 
and religious utterance, are venerated by every patriotic heart 
and international mind. Their writings are still what they 
have been for three thousand years: the strength and honor 
of free nations.?! 

As coercion subsided and intelligence and conscience grew, 
men who were no longer ignorant of history repaired to 
Scripture for its explanation. Despondent ones, oppressed 
by the consciousness of a decay in which each generation 
seemed inferior to the last, got comfort and hope from its 
assurance that humanity’s future was blessed. By its spirit, 
even more than by its words, imperishable truths and princi- 
ples were impressed afresh upon successive periods. New 
experiments in government and education; new methods for 


*1 Cf, W. F. Moulton: “ The History of the English Bible’; Ernst von 
Dobschiitz: ‘‘ The Influence of the Bible on Civilization ”’; Julius F. Seebach: 
“* The Book of Free Men’”’; E. W. Work: ‘‘ The Bible in English Literature.’’ 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 295 


changing climates of thought and sentiment, were based upon 
the Divine Revelation which remained a fixity in man’s 
constant flux. Why then should we have to bewail its loss of 
prestige and authority? For though it is still highly esteemed 
by numberless Christians, and by devout scholars who have 
set its light upon a golden candlestick, the masses either give 
it lip service, or habitually neglect it. Ten States of our 
Federal Union have shut it out of their public schools; nine- 
teen are silent about its use in them; six require that a portion 
shall be read daily; six more permit its reading, and the issue 
is in doubt in Michigan and California. Other English- 
speaking and continental countries report a similar neglect. 
The self-deceptions of a democracy which needs direction 
quite as much as it needs impulse are one explanation of 
this indifference toward the Book which has been the rock of 
civilized Nationalism. Another explanation is found in the 
injurious defenses of its friends, who impose upon it dogmatic 
ideas it does not require, and which its spirit repudiates. I 
do not have to further discuss their superfluous additions to its 
plain text, to its rich varieties of meaning, and its divine hu- 
manness. For where men who revere it have misunderstood 
its inner meanings they could not rob it of its authority. 
No imaginary ideas about it for the sake of gratified emotions 
ean hide the illumination which streams from its pages: an 
illumination too real for traditionalists or liberals either to 
obscure or to forsake. 


V 


The end is not yet; for the unexhausted significance of the 
Bible is one of the main reliances of future democracy. Other 
experiments have to be made in government; other controver- 
sies between States will arise; other congested peoples will 
go on pilgrimages. Whether reason and goodwill, or preju- 
dice and suspicion are to have right of way in their making 
or unmaking is temporarily uncertain; though we believe it 


296 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


to be finally sure. Meanwhile, it is very easy to be too 
sure of the forms of higher things at the very moment when 
their realities are ebbing away. If they preserve these 
realities they will have to return to the Bible. 

But these propositions open much serious and complex de- 
bate which is not to our present purpose, except as we detect 
in them the religious facts and needs they either contain or 
imply. The deviations of nationalistic politics, the records of 
peace or war, the work of servants of the State, do not imme- 
diately concern us, save as they were also serviceable to the 
cause of God. We seek the essentials of His Divine Order, 
which Christianity embodies, the Church represents, and the 
Bible expresses. We seek them, aware, I trust, that they are 
now environed by a materialism with which the Bible refuses 
to bargain, and to which the real welfare of Nationalism is 
unalterably opposed. At present its political machineries 
and impersonal things should be devoted to an international 
expansion in behalf of world amity and concord, which no 
State can undertake without patience, wisdom, courage, the 
vision of faith, and that love of mankind which many waters 
cannot quench. These gifts and graces are purely personal 
and spiritual. By their aid the Bible was written and modern 
nations were made free; nothing good has been rightly appre- 
hended apart from them. The better day of democracy may 
come when it cultivates them again; forsakes a vulgar and 
sensational literature for the teaching of Biblical realities; abol- 
ishes its false gods of self-will and pride for the worship of the 
one true God; and finds the explanation and the practice of 
good government, not in mere politics, but in the foreordi- 
nations of His Will. 

The Renaissance, the Reformation, the various transla- 
tions of the Bible, Luther’s virile personality, and Calvin’s 
formidable intellectualism, were the chief formative factors 
of modern Nationalism. That of Scotland was derived 
from Geneva through John Knox; that of England came 
by the circuitous route of a characteristic independence, in- 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 297 


tensified by the isolation of the English people, and the reso- 
lution of the Plantagenet and Tudor monarchs to govern 
without outside interference. In Scotland the transition of the 
State to what eventually proved to be a harmonious and vig- 
orous Nationalism was deferred for a time by the uniting of 
her ancient northern realm with that of England. But Presby- 
terian doctrines, the poetry of Burns, the novels of Scott, and 
the intellectual and commercial integrity of the Scotch people 
soon gave them an eminence which no modern nation sur- 
passes. Their services to the British Empire and to our Re- 
public have been out of all proportion to the size of their coun- 
try, or the number of its inhabitants. In England, National- 
ism’s later courses were so wisely pursued after the revolt of 
the American Colonies, that they led to the establishment of a 
series of Commonwealths and of Crown provinces which out- 
vie in extent the former empires of the world. The adminis- 
tration of these vast domains is the model of its kind. Its 
contributions to civilization and to the general welfare of 
the race cannot be easily estimated. 

Behind all formative factors of sixteenth century Nation- 
alism, however, was that felt lack of system which followed 
the collapse of Medizvalism. In the ensuing chaos two 
contrary laws solicited men’s obedience. The one was the 
law of tribalism, obliging them to be always under arms and 
prepared for battle; the other, the law of peace, urging thrift 
and industry for the sake of social wellbeing. Founders and 
reformers of nations discovered that old antagonisms re- 
vived in their new associations; that, as Nietzsche said, 
‘Where the State begins, Humanity ends.” Torn by fac- 
tions, unable to agree on anything except to disagree, 
threatened by foreign foes, deprived of the politic o-ecclesias- 
tical system which had been the guardian of their recent past, 
busy in constructing States at a time when official arrogance, 
unscrupulous acquisition and oppression were rife, the mak- 
ers of earlier Nationalism were often compelled to fight, not 
for conquest but for existence. The Ottoman Turk took his 


298 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


toll of revenge for the earlier Crusades. Religious wars arose 
between national Churches or between the various sects that 
divided them. The City of God that was supposed to include 
the whole of Christendom was supplanted by ‘‘a number of 
Israels, each ruled by its own successor of David.’’ Cathol- 
icism remained loyal to the Papacy; it would neither abolish 
the throne of St. Peter, nor in any way reduce its claims, 
since to have done so would have de-Romanized it forever. 
For believers in Rome the economic status of Protestant 
States was negligible when compared with the ageless prece- 
dence of the Eternal City, and with the supremacy of the 
Pontiff as God’s vicegerent over an Eternal Society. 

The Holy See no longer openly pronounced against the 
State as of diabolic origin, but it plotted against it and dis- 
paraged its claims. For the sake of ecclesiastical interests it 
championed the persecutions of Philip II of Spain in Holland, 
and his designs against the rising naval strength of Eliza- 
bethan England. lLatinized to provincialism, the Curia 
seemed unable to understand that after the abdication of 
Charles V, Nationalism had the game in its own hand, pro- 
vided it could compose its interminable squabbles. For it 
was not the great Emperor alone; it was the Empire that 
had abdicated. No such hegemony as his could now operate 
in Europe; and when Philip’s “Invincible Armada” was 
dashed to pieces against the storm-bound coasts of Great 
Britain and Ireland, the predominance of the new order was 
assured. Since then it has had a blood-stained history. The 
Thirty Years’ War forced Germany into a condition of neu- 
trality and weakness that lasted till the second half of the 
nineteenth century. The campaigns of Marlborough, of 
Louis XIV, of Napoleon I, of Italy against Austria, of 
France against Germany; and the civil wars in England, in 
the South American Republics, and in the United States, 
caused those endless sufferings and piled up those enormous 
public debts that stifled social reforms for three centuries. 

A few of these conflicts arose out of interests that seemed 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 299 


to have no other possible settlement than that of the sword. 
As we have seen, its benevolent use seems paradoxical, 
yet it cannot be gainsaid that physical force has extended 
the scope of civilization, and inaugurated its reign in com- 
munities where barbarism was once supreme. The United 
States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa 
were formerly occupied by non-progressive aborigines whom 
their white conquerors frequently treated with unpardon- 
able brutality. Yet in the sequel some freedom was won, 
some fusions were made, some questions decided rightly. 
The fair minded historian must therefore concede that the 
militant forces of Nationalism, though often greedy and 
lawless, were not always as utterly non-religious as some 
hold them to have been. They had a religion of their 
own: one of valor, and not without its fascinations. It 
moved men’s souls because it was based, not on false- 
hoods but on half-truths. It seemed to them to be the 
salt that saved the world from putrefaction. Against the 
slackness of selfish individualism it set the citizen’s supreme 
duty to the State. But it is with the future of war as a 
brutal and useless appendage to human society, rather than 
with its past, that we have to do; and even that past, in the 
main, witnesses against it as the outbreak of an atavistic 
bestiality which must be exterminated, or it will extermi- 
nate nations. 

No account of Nationalism would be sufficient for us which 
did not emphasize the impetus given to it by the Puritanism 
of Holland, England, Scotland and America. The chief dif- 
ference between these diversified groups of one religious per- 
suasion, and the Roman Catholics or Anglicans who opposed 
them, was related to the visible Church, in which only those 
who fulfilled their obligations to ecclesiastical lordship were 
regarded as citizens of the Commonwealth. The one party 
contended that believers reached Christ through the Church, 
the other that they reached the Church through Christ. So 
far there was truth on both sides. But when, as Dr. Oman 


300 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


puts it, the further contention was made by Catholicism that 
the legally privileged clergy did not have to belong to 
the community of believers at all, but were of a superior 
realm, the assumptions of ecclesiasticism reached their ulti- 
mate.”” Although the separations were begun in the reli- 
gious world, they reached their fuller dimensions in that of 
politics. Not all was different that seemed to be so on the 
surface. When the Puritan affirmed that man could never 
be right in his human relations until he was right in his divine 
relations, and the Pilgrim affirmed that the civil magistrate 
should not control religious affairs, they were nearer to 
their Roman Catholic brethren than is commonly supposed. 
Both were agreed upon the paramountcy of the Eternal Will 
in human society, but they did not agree, and are not yet 
agreed, upon the authorized vehicles of that Will. 

The modern conception of religion as an individual con- 
cern was then, except in the case of the Pilgrims, as foreign to 
Protestant as to Catholic churchmen. They accepted the 
implications of political nationality as fixed principles, and 
even stimulated national temper and ideas that were de- 
structive of Catholicity. It never seems to have occurred to 
them that there were moral facts in the ideal of a Universal 
Divine Society which had to be reckoned with, or that the 
failure to be really Catholic was a failure to be really Chris- 
tian.”? Churchmanship for all parties, except the sectarians 
of Plymouth Colony, was a matter of citizenship, and this 
idea has thriven until our own day. ‘‘No man,” said 
Richard Hooker, ‘‘is a member of the Commonwealth who 
is not also a member of the Church of England ”’; and the 
original settlers of Virginia heartily agreed with him. As 
late as 1792 Burke wrote: ‘An alliance between Church and 
State in a Christian Commonwealth is an idle opinion. For 
in that Commonwealth Church and State are one and the 
same thing.’”’? His view suggested one of the first literary 


22 Cf. John Oman: ‘‘ The Problem of Faith and Freedom,”’ p. 353 f. 
23 Cf Richard Roberts: ‘“‘ The Church and the Commonwealth,” p. 63. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 301 


efforts of Gladstone, whose treatise upon it earned Macau- 
lay’s salutation of the Victorian Liberal Premier as the 
“rising hope of the stern and unbending Tories.” 


VI 


During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, govern- 
ing authority of every kind came under fire from many quar- 
ters. Another age of revolution had set in as the further re- 
sult of the Reformation. A quickened public conscience 
attacked Protestantism and Catholicism. The philosophy of 
“natural rights” bore down upon the inequalities and tyran- 
nies of States. Presently the whole religious and political 
organism which has been briefly outlined here was in- 
dicted for its faults and vices with an intellectual and 
moral efficiency that would have rejoiced Medieval doctors. 
Nearly every ascertainable principle of rule and method of 
administration was arraigned by competent advocates who 
demanded a larger measure of individual and social lib- 
erty. This disturbance took active form in the American 
Revolution, and culminated in that of France at the close of 
the eighteenth century. But it had already received its ini- 
tial impulse from the Encyclopedists of the latter nation, 
who in turn derived their staple ideas from the Scotch meta- 
physicians. It has been prolific both of conflicts and of 
progress. Democratic States trace their constitutionalism to 
the general movement in question. It had its altruistic 
as well as its selfish aspects, its estimable and intimate 
connections with lawful freedom and broadening political 
equality. But it also gave rise to the egoism which charac- 
terizes modern society. 

Yet it was not in substance, as some writers have said, a 
historic effort to elevate the individual above the mass. It is 
more accurately described as an attempt to penetrate behind 
all existing laws, forms and institutions to their real life and 
meaning. The peril of the process lay, as it still lies, in its 


302 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


emphasis on personality, and its insufficient conception of 
community life.24 Nevertheless, as a reaction against the 
fatuous complacency with the existing order, it did good 
work, and is doing it today as a preparatory cause of social 
and industrial advance. Our world feels conscious that it 
has the individual on its heart and hands as never before. 
Some modern theories of Nationalism that bid fair to 
sweep away every other authority, except that of the State, 
usurp the vital spiritual liberty of the past two thousand 
years which originated in Christianity. Nationalists of an 
advanced sort wink at immoral action if, as they imagine, the 
State profits by it. Thus, one of the leading daily jour- 
nals of America, which gravely informs its readers that it 
is ‘the greatest newspaper in the world,” prints upon its 
editorial page the oft quoted sentiment, ‘“‘My country, right 
or wrong.” According to this emotional outburst there is 
more than one moral order for the moral universe, in which 
Nationalism enjoys exemptions which nothing else can claim. 
To say that our moral criticism of the State must rest on iden- 
tically ethical grounds with that of the individual offends a 
species of State worship. What are the principles of the 
Decalogue or of the Sermon on the Mount, when compared 
with the demands of national prosperity and expansion? 
Moreover, the citizen is dragged into the immoralities of the 
State. If in its organized selfishness it falsifies, then all 
patriots must become liars; if it steals, they must become 
thieves. The inconsistency of this position has been noted 
by Lord Acton: “By proclaiming the abolition of privileges, 
it (the State) emancipates the subjects of every such au- 
thority in order to transfer them exclusively to its own. It 
recognizes liberty only in the individual, because it is only in 
the individual that liberty can be separated from authority, 
and the right of conditional obedience deprived of the security 
of a limited command.” ?° Under obedience to a majority 


24 Cf. John Oman: ‘‘ Grace and Personality,’ p. 52 ff. 
25 *‘ History of Freedom,” p. 151. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 303 


rule, as the alternative for aristocracies and monarchies of 
the patriarchal order, an irresistible power is substituted for 
an idolatrous principle. I have said enough to show that the 
passage of the State from absolutism to constitutionalism has 
not been calm and uninterrupted. The Scylla of tyranny and 
the Charybdis of anarchy are never far away from human 
organizations so long as sin, selfishness and greed prevail in 
human nature; nor is there any prevention of these condi- 
tions outside noble religious and political beliefs. 

Let me repeat that governments, whether national or mu- 
nicipal, absolutist or democratic, can neither be successfully 
organized nor maintained on any other basis than the honesty 
and integrity of the individual citizen; and these virtues have 
to be assumed in order to carry on their administration. 
Occasional contradictions of their assumption are harsh re- 
minders that no rule, however free, is ever freed from right- 
eousness; and that when it endeavors to escape the control 
of Supreme Righteousness it becomes a tyranny. Men’s 
salvation from political servitude is only achieved by their 
unfaltermg adherence to right and repudiation of wrong. 
That they are alive to the issue is shown by constitutional 
amendments, swollen codes of legislation, carefully contrived 
charters, recipes for civic virtue, and theories most nu- 
merous in democratic States, that would substitute very 
different political methods for those now in use. These de- 
vices may be good, bad or indifferent, but all are empirical; 
subject to the fact that there is no human way to prevent 
peoples from entertaining erroneous views, nor from cherish- 
ing evil designs. They can be reduced to a condition border- 
ing on immoral insanity by misrepresentations as to facts, 
as was the case with Germany and other nations during 
the late war; *° or again, through having the blank of igno- 
rance filled in by passion and prejudice, to the exclusion of in- 
quiry and reflection. Public opinion may thus be driven to 
find expression in abnormal, egotistical and dangerous ways. 

26 Cf. Herbert H. Asquith: ‘‘ The Genesis of the War.”’ 


304 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Men’s sense of civilization may be temporarily overcome by 
the instincts of primitivism. Both are under the human skin, 
and the last is the first in point of time. Its physical and 
psychic elements have occupied the cells of the human body 
from the remotest ages, and do not intend to be dispos- 
sessed. So long, therefore, as public opinion in free States 
controls their national and international intercourse and 
action, they will require religious control. Even a little pros- 
perity often proves too much for their mental equilibrium; a 
little adversity or opposition arouses their unwarranted 
anger. 

Notwithstanding these contingencies, political freedom is 
vital in democratic Nationalism; and we are not likely to 
exchange its doctrines for those of repressive systems. But 
it can hardly be said to be the last phase of Nationalism. 
Its history shows that in the exceedingly difficult and deli- 
cate art of State government, dealing as it does with re- 
ractory human beings, it is always best to practice just and 
humane policies. That history also shows that it is unwise 
to suppose such policies are finalities in themselves. Facts 
are more important in this connection than constitutional 
or legislative documents; and actual experience invariably 
goes beyond their provisions. The conclusion is that no 
marked progress will be made by means of the finest political 
instruments, unless they are sustained by an enlightened pub- 
lic conscience, and enforced by the compulsions of a higher 
law. Hence Nationalism has no problems which are not 
moral and religious in nature; and this being so, the qualities 
of the people are the sole means for the resolving of their 
confused purposes, habits and beliefs, into a commonalty of 
right living. 

Historians who tell us what Christianity has done to for- 
ward this kind of living are often better critics of its worth 
than controversial clerics who only think of what it is or is 
not. For historians are at least aware that while other re- 
ligious beliefs have created an intense and vigorous Nation- 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 305 


alism in Egypt, Judwa and the Hellenic nations, the Church 
of God alone has undertaken the absorption of all races into 
one Fraternity, combining a stringent ethical discipline with 
the ameliorations of universal good will. It is also true that 
Protestantism, as a late form of Christianity, has given first 
rank in the family of nations to those peoples who accepted 
its teachings. Cardinal Newman’s objection that the ma- 
terial benefits of Protestantism are but an illusory good, as- 
suredly not worth its spiritual cost, evades the point by 
arbitrarily separating the sacred from the secular in human 
affairs.” It cannot be denied that States whose intelli- 
gence and morality have commanded the respect and alle- 
giance of Catholics and Protestants, were usually founded 
upon the principles evolved out of the conflicts of Medizval- 
ism with the modern spirit. Yet Protestantism, as we have 
seen, did not invariably insist upon civil and religious free- 
dom, nor always make concessions to the right of private 
judgment. The advanced positions taken by St. Thomas and 
Marsiglio were not steadfastly held by the Reformation 
leaders. They appeared for tyranny as well as for liberty, 
seized monarchies which remained absolute, and republics 
which remained as free as they were before. Modern States 
retained the penal codes against heresy, and decreed that 
every schism should be punished but their own. Too often 
Protestantism handed over to civil magistrates the autocratic 
power it had wrested from ecclesiastics. The superflous bag- 
gage which it brought out of the house of bondage hampered 
it for a prolonged period. Many of its political and theologi- 
cal ideas continued their subservience to archaic beliefs and 
methods of inquiry. 

Despite these drawbacks, its encouragement of learning 
produced the sense of rationality: of a Creation ruled by 
reason, not by thaumaturgy. The romanticism of the 
Medizevalists had well nigh outlawed the intellectual facul- 


27 Cf. ‘‘Lectures on Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in submitting 
to the Catholic Church,’’ Lecture VIII. 


306 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


ties which Protestantism recovered and stimulated to good 
effect. To it, therefore, must be attributed the scientific dis- 
coveries of the modern period. Their results, like a clean but 
corroding acid, have dissolved the curious imaginations of a 
bygone world, and helped men to discern real and infinitely 
greater marvels in God’s Universe, by teaching them to be- 
lieve in the sanctity of correct and straighforward thinking. 
Protestantism has grave defects: it is often too separative, 
hard, metallic, materialized. But it furnished a counter irri- 
tant for the emotionalism which formerly arrested progress, 
and sometimes approached idiocy. The full stream of its 
power was diverted from life’s arts and elegancies, fancies 
and delights, to the practical management of human affairs. 
It bred those magistrates who led in the formation of great 
though isolated States, and who were chary of a federalism 
which neither Hildebrand nor Innocent III could render ef- 
ficient. The English-speaking nations, composed as they are 
of Roman Catholics and Protestants alike, are nearly always 
quoted as the prime examples of Protestant statesmanship. 
For though members of both Churches participated in their 
making, Protestant principles prevailed in it. Prussia has 
been contrasted with Austria as a despotism in a desert, with- 
out egress to the sea, which nevertheless surpassed its southern 
and far more fortunately situated and richer rival in finanee, 
education, intelligence and administrative capacity. After 
Sadowa, Catholic Austria had to surrender her historic he- 
gemony of the German nations to Protestant Prussia. At 
Sedan the same result banished the last remnants of the 
Napoleonic legend as a political force in Europe. After these 
victories the praises of Prussia were chanted by millions of 
Protestants whose children now sing to a very different tune. 
They were in no sense religious triumphs, nor did freedom 
receive advantage from them. They were the triumphs of 
a paganized Nationalism masquerading behind a Deity in- 
vented for its own fell purpose, and for which the world has 
had to pay full dearly. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 307 


Pursue the comparison elsewhere, between the Swiss Can- 
tons of Berne and Valais, Sweden and Sicily, Holland and 
Spain, and you will find, I think, that the advantages of 
Protestant, or largely Protestant nations, are traceable to a 
religious creed which expresses itself in statesmanship, in 
economics, in inventions, in manufactures. It assumes the 
risks of progress, and carries with it the resolution to know 
and apply all knowledge that can be gained. It refuses to dis- 
trust the creative forces of intellectual freedom as inimical 
to religious faith, and they have amply repaid its confidence 
in them. Even its theology, which excites no special admira- 
tion among some scholars or wealthy worldlings, is closely 
related to their prosperity. Its contacts with the secular 
and political realms are the more impressive because of the 
contrasts I have mentioned. These contrasts have arisen 
during and since the sixteenth century; they have recast the 
maps of the world, and changed the headquarters of its gov- 
ernments. What was the England of the Tudors, or the Hol- 
land of William the Silent, or the Brandenburg of the Hohen- 
zollerns when Luther’s thunderings broke the repose of 
Church and Empire? Or what again became of the Spanish 
possessions in the New World after the Protestant mariners of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gained the freedom 
of the seas? 

According to Nationalism’s prevailing creed, the moral is, 
that if you want a powerful State, thoroughly modern, with 
the latest scientific equipment, fresh ideas and enduring gov- 
ernment, it must be a free State in which the Church is also 
free, and does not prohibit the expanding life of the Common- 
wealth, nor regard an ecclesiastical frontier as the sacred en- 
closure of intellectual stagnation. But there are numberless 
Roman Catholic citizens who readily assent to these pro- 
posals, and, in asserting them, Protestants must beware of 
vanity. They, too, are liable to borrow their principles from 
a lower but more convenient level than that of the New 
Testament; and their failures are palpable to the critics who 


308 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


are always at their heels. When tempted to boast of Nation- 
alism’s historic connection with their Churches, it is well for 
Protestants to recall the sinister side of the shield of victory. 


VII 


A few far-sighted poets and thinkers perceived at the mo- 
ment what is now patent to everybody, that if Nationalism 
meant the suppression of everything that opposed it, it 
ceased to be beneficent, became destructive, and wound up in 
a materialized imperialism. ‘This is exactly what happened in 
the case of Prussia, and will happen again if State absolutism, 
such as Prussia fastened on Germany, is repeated else- 
where. The era of her Weltpolitik as the logical outcome of 
unrestrained Nationalism did not begin until 1900. It was 
Bismarck who in 1871 gave it leeway in his creation of the 
German Empire, which he left intact and to all appearances 
impregnable. Herbert H. Asquith says that Bismarck was 
probably the most consummate master of the strategy of the 
political chessboard in history. Yet though the insane meas- 
ures that led to the World War would never have been sanc- 
tioned by him, he has a place in the pedigree of its authors. 
It was his objective idealism which moulded Germany’s 
character, her thought and her political ambitions. Taking 
every possible advantage of other nations, with some of whose 
rulers ineptitude in statesmanship had become an inveterate 
habit, he forged the bonds of German unity, to use his own 
phrase, “in blood and iron.” Further, in his own speech, ‘‘to 
do this I set one man against another, and again and again I 
broke them.” Jealous, irritable, candid in his confessions of 
duplicity and fraud, averse to the mistiness which some mis- 
take for wisdom, Jovian in outline and of achievement, he 
lived long enough to regret some results of his gigantic under- 
takings, and to predict the unavoidable conflict which de- 
stroyed the Empire he had reared. , 

28 William Kay Wallace: ‘‘The Trend of History,’’ p. 301 ff. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM 309 


I have no desire to inflict upon you the story, well known 
in its broad outlines, of the Machiavellian duplicities and 
frauds of the pre-war period, except to say that no more dis- 
graceful period ever ended in a worse catastrophe. Insidious 
weapons of diplomacy, seductions of journalism, suggestions 
aimed at misleading the masses, were all too common in other 
Kuropean nations besides Germany and Austria. They 
poisoned personal character as well as national and interna- 
tional relations, and inflamed Protestants to kill Protestants, 
and Catholics to kill Catholics. All religious boundaries 
broke down when the nationalized imperialistic flood came. 
These events, fresh in the memory of mankind, explain the 
distrust of Nationalism’s aspirations which many justly feel. 
With them, its apotheosis has left it reprobate. For if the 
State could properly disregard natural rights and treat them 
as nonexistent, then it could logically take the same attitude 
toward all other elements of the moral law. This is precisely 
the view of Burgess, who asserts that the State is the only au- 
thority competent to decide whether or not its proposed ac- 
tion constitutes a violation of morality: ‘the best interpre- 
ter of the laws of God and reason, and the human organ least 
likely to do wrong; hence one must hold to the principle that 
the State can do no wrong.” ?? Its actual wrong-doing leaves 
men terrorized at the thought of repetition. They now 
understand that before States can fly to force they must cut 
loose from right and freedom. Then very quickly all criteria 
of right and wrong, or of freedom; and all standards of public 
interest and humanitarianism, become as a dissolving dream. 
Thus the claim of the State to an unlimited supremacy not 
only ignores religion and the Church; it shuts off intervention 
while it cuts the throat of morality. 

This is the post-war scenery that oppresses many millions 
of hearts at home and abroad. Some who patronize or ridicule 
their fears for the spiritual fabric of society have bad moments 


29 Cf. John A. Ryan and Moorhouse F. X. Millar: ‘‘The State and the 
Church,’”’ p. 201. 


310 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


of their own. They are haunted by the ghosts of Socialism, 
and unsparingly denounce its agitators who even in their de- 
feat so often win the day. The capitalistic system which has 
built up Nationalism is plied with abuse, obloquy and defi- 
ance. The rude jostlings of forces that nothing but a united 
religious faith can direct aright threaten to grind civilization 
to powder. Street corner orators are the flying wing of an 
army of essayists, editors, publicists and industrialists, which 
promises us another and a better Reformation: a Renais- 
sance that shall be for all peoples, and not for the literary, 
artistic, or the ruling classes alone. The proletariat has put 
itself ahead even of the people in communistic Russia. Only 
those who engage in manual toil, and are without productive 
property, are entitled to political privileges. They are the 
nation; and educated or wealthy people, employers or owners 
of property, are aliens to a man. So according to National- 
ism’s final pretensions, when on the rampage in Communism, 
its sword cuts both ways. In its latest form it assassinates 
traditional ideals only to turn on liberal ideals, and is as 
ready to suppress the latter as the former. The inconsisten- 
cies of separatism are more painfully evident now than when 
it meant revolt against a stupendous world Church, united 
in theory, in will, in practice, in rule, and also in the sup- 
port of an overweighted and maladministered organization. 
But when separatism carries the war into Africa, and breeds 
dissensions in nations themselves, setting religious and politi- 
cal authorities by the ears, and loosening the structure of 
Church and State, you can be certain that unification will 
come to its own. 

Against this view, extreme dissidents urge that agitation 
for the sake of improvement is the chief mission of the Church. 
She exists to pull down in order that she may set up again, to 
lose herself in the ennoblement of society. So long as she has 
a discerning vision of the actual verities of life, and a firm hand 
for using them, who, being a genuine son of Protestantism, 
laments the sacrifice of her being? Yet there are limits to 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM oll 


such sacrifice, or it would degenerate into suicide, as there 
are limits to liberty, or it would run to despotism. There is 
not much real freedom in our self-contradictions, nor in the , 
vagaries of private judgment which we cannot check. Prot- — 
estantism has organized great States, but it has yet to organ- 
ize a universal Church which can save States from mutual 
destruction. Its failure to furnish a catholic center for con- 
tending sects; to silence disloyalty and even malevolence in 
its own ranks, and to absorb excrescent cults has to be sadly 
acknowledged. The failure cannot be quoted in praise of 
freedom, since it arises from the insolence of individualism. 
But if our ancestral faith, while throwing off the subtleties 
and errors of the past, has taken on staggering burdens of 
its own, it has also produced free men and women, together 
with their finest political organizations. And if it does not 
justify the utmost praise of its eulogists, neither does it de- 
serve the utmost blame of its opponents. The facts of its his- 
tory cannot be spirited away by verbal legerdemain. They 
are the ineffaceable records that Time inscribes on the front 
of majestic States to commemorate the Reformers of the 
Medizval Church. 

We do not have to agree, therefore, that the alternatives 
are all State in Protestantism and all Church in Catholicism. 
Both Communions participate in State consciousness and in 
Church consciousness. The point is, which blends them best 
and makes the best use of both conjointly? Roman Cathol- 
icism and Protestantism are alike versed in secular politics, 
and laymen often feel the pull of their Faith in civic af- 
fairs. I shall not undertake to judge between them, although 
Dean Inge insists that where clerical Catholicism preponder- 
ates it is an injury to good citizenship. Yet he also insists 
that the old idea of the Church as “the nation under its 
spiritual aspect, is surely the right one;”’ in which case 
these who agree with him have a very disordered household 
to set to rights. He admits that the idea ‘is impracticable ' 
at present partly because the spiritual Roman Empire, with 


312 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


its claims to supernational or extranational obedience, still 
survives — a relic of the dead world-empire still vigorous in 
the midst of modern nationalism; and partly because the 
Church has split up into smaller corporations, none of which 
is capable of acting as the complete embodiment of the re- 
ligion of the nation, while many prefer to stand outside all 
religious organizations.’’ We are tempted to ask what keeps 
the relic of a dead empire alive? It shows no sign of im- 
pending death, and it must possess a marked propensity for 
life to hold it under such difficulties. It may also be added 
that there is an obedience, whatever qualification it demands, 
which is due to God and not to man, nor to any human asso- 
ciations. The Dean seems to wish that the State could be 
placed under the protection of religion existing as a moral 
institution, recognized by all citizens as the agent of their 
highest possible life. Then “we might hope to see a great 
improvement in the lamentably low standard of international 
morality, and a diminution in the sordid corruption, class- 
bribery and intrigue which made up the life of democratic 
politics.”’ *° 

These observations indicate that the State is no longer for 
the modern man what it was for the ancient Greek: solitary, 
unique, sacred; the sole repository of human hopes and fears. 
He has to do with the Church, organized from the beginning 
as a universal body. There has never been a similar organi- 
zation of civil society, or one that was intended to exist in 
such independence of all other earthly institutions. It suc- 
ceeded to the place of former empires and gave inception 
to the modern State. Perhaps, as Troeltsch is confident, a 
“ Church-directed civilization” is no longer possible. Yet a 
Church determined to combat spiritual evils with spirit- 
ual weapons, opposing to the world’s standards of values 
those which she has received from her living Lord, is quite 
possible. Assuredly, the actual Church we serve cannot for- 


30W. R. Inge: “ Religion and the State’’ in ‘‘The Hibbert Journal,’’ 
July 1920, p. 657. 


THE RISE OF NATIONALISM Thole 


ever cooperate in a guilty partnership of limited liability with 
political bodies that are organized apart from God. 

The conclusion for believers in the New Testament Faith 
and in the ethic of prophetic Israel is, that Nationalism_is-a 
necessary but. mediating institution. between tribalism and a_ 
further Christian development of human association, which 
corresponds more closely with the ideals of Jesus Christ. To 
dismiss these statements as absurd does not confute them. 
Nationalism itself was ushered in, after Imperialism played 
out its part, with a chorus of contempt from the great and 
the powerful. And Nationalism now clutches us so rigidly 
that we can scarcely imagine a recent age when Frenchmen 
who could not speak English ruled England, and Germans 
ruled in Continental Europe over a diversity of peoples, and 
Popes of a varied lineage ruled Christendom’s many races. 
Medieval Federalism appeared to be firmly established; its 
policies were by no means always despicable; on the contrary, 
many were quite as wise as those of modern nations. Its 
government, like contemporary Gothic cathedrals, followed 
the principle of adjusted thrusts: every department was 
braced upon another, and all rested on a common foundation. 
Nevertheless, its responsible chieftains pulled down the pil- 
lars of their own temple, and human progress took a bold and 
startling urge forward. Do not be surprised, therefore, if 
Nationalism, imitating every previous system, slowly yields 
to changes that no political or racial obstinacy can avert. It 
has had the good will of the virtuous and the brave; their 
domestic habits have been its stay; the best breeds of man- 
kind have fought for it; the most sagacious statesmen have 
administered its legislation, and held the scales of its justice 
with an even hand. ‘Temperament, climate, territory and 
selective colonization have favored it in Europe and America. 
It is still so immense a factor that many deem it presump- 
tuous even to call it to account.*! 


31 Cf, Philip Marshal Brown: ‘‘International Society, Its Nature and 
Interests,’’ Ch. XIII on ‘‘Imponderables,”’ p. 150 ff. 


314 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Yet many patriotic men and women reluctantly scrutinize 
some of its effects. They ask if Christianity, taking pattern 
from the scientific associations and movements of the age, 
and from organizations which exist for social propaganda, 
cannot find a like federation and expansion for Nationalism. 
Then it may become the living soul of the internationalism 
of peace and justice which the Old Testament predicts, and 
for which we are commanded to preach the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ among all nations. The answer must be deferred to 
the next and concluding lecture. 


NINTH LECTURE 
THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 


“‘T should have wished to show you that the same deliberate rejection 
of the moral code which smoothed the paths of absolute monarchy and 
of oligarchy, signalized the advent of the democratic claim to unlimited 
power — that one of its leading champions avowed the design of cor- 
rupting the moral sense of men, in order to destroy the influence of 
religion, and a famous apostle of enlightenment and toleration wished 
that the last king might be strangled with the entrails of the last priest. 
I would have tried to explain the connection between the doctrine of 
Adam Smith, that labor is the original source of all wealth, and the 
conclusion that the producers of wealth virtually compose the nation, 
by which Sieyés subverted historic France; and to show that Rousseau’s 
definition of the social compact as a voluntary association of equal 
partners conducted Marat, by short and unavoidable stages, to declare 
that the poorer classes were absolved, by the law of self-preservation, 
from the conditions of a contract which awarded to them misery and 
death; that they were at war with society, and had a right to all they 
could get by exterminating the rich, and their inflexible theory of equal- 
ity . . . has been associated with envy and hatred and bloodshed, 
and is now the most dangerous enemy lurking in our path.” 


Lorp Acton: The History of Freedom, pp. 57-58. 


NINTH LECTURE 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 


Review of preceding lectures — Admonitions of the past and chal- 
lenges of the present — No partnership between Church and State — 
Politics and Principles — Lights and Shadows of the World — The 
imperative duty of Protestantism for world peace —A coalition of 
Protestantism for the readjustment of Christendom — Education and 
Democracy — Education and Religion — The need for a mutual under- 
standing between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism — Saints 
found in both sections of the Western Church — The responsibility 
of Protestantism in the face of atheistical Socialism and the Moslem 
advance — The need of a unified Church consciousness in Protestant- 
ism — The charges against sectarianism — The call for leadership — 
The adequate solution. 


WE come to the last of these lectures aware that they have 
only touched the fringe of the theme they are supposed to 
expound. We have seen how often freedom was either un- 
known, or adopted as a last resort when men had grown weary 
of despotism. Because they could not live by compulsion, 
they were bound to release themselves and their institutions 
from the clutch of the dead. Their selfish as distinguished 
from their benevolent uses of power have been noted. Forms 
of philosophical reaction against more liberal conceptions of 
government have been mentioned. Theories that identified 
the citizen with the State, or that merged his individuality in 
the State’s political aggrandizement, are herein related. How 
ecclesiastics endeavored to subject all human associations 
to the Church, or temporal princes sought to enforce their pol- 
icies upon her, is woven into this fragmentary story. It could 
not deal with these complicated issues in fullness of principle 
or of detail. Many vital things have been necessarily omit- 
ted; many crises arose in the evolution of modern society to 

317 


318 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


which no reference ismade. Yet if what is narrated promotes 
the living unity which generates its own loyalties in Christian 
men and nations, the chief aim of the lectures will have been 
gained. 

Though a momentous epoch closed with the late war, and 
opinions and beliefs once deemed unassailable then perished, 
the world which needs them no more still needs the instruc- 
tion of the past. Protestantism hears the challenge of its 
Apostolic, Patristic, and Medieval periods; charged with ad- 
monition and encouragement for Church and State. As our 
knowledge of those periods is marshaled, and what they teach 
better understood, their influence grows upon our faith and 
thought. When troubled by the present indifference toward 
organized religion, we are reminded of the strange oblivion in 
which early Christianity was buried by Pagan scholars and 
historians. Bishop Lightfoot asks how a movement so rich in 
moral phenomena could have escaped Seneca’s notice; how 
one so productive of transforming personalities could have 
been unheeded by Plutarch? ‘‘ How is it again, that Marcus 
Aurelius, the philosophical emperor, dismisses ‘the Chris- 
tians’ in his writings with one brief scornful allusion, though 
he had been flooded with apologies and memorials in their be- 
half, and though they had served in the very army which he 
commanded in person?”’ ! The answer would be more diffi- 
cult than it is, did we not apprehend, first, that the wisdom of 
men is frequently foolishness with God, and again, that reti- 
cence is sometimes the sole defense of skepticism, confronted 
by what is, to it, an inexplicable spiritual progress. The finest 
example of such progress belongs to that Apostolic Age whose 
life and power it is the avowed mission of Christianity to per- 
petuate. Should the Churches of the Reformed Faith be 
tempted to forget this mission, they may well recall the fate 
of the Communions to which the letters of the New Testa- 
ment were originally addressed. Although they were first in 


1 Bishop Lightfoot: ‘‘Commentary: St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, ”’ 
Introduction, pp. 27-29. 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 319 


the service and fellowship of Jesus Christ, nearly all have 
ceased to exist. Their extinction warns us of His determina- 
tion that every branch shall be grafted into the true Vine, and 
be filled with its living juices. 

Protestantism, like Apostolic Christianity, was born into a 
world of peril and promise. It has flourished in outward 
strength and gained ascendency in the foremost nations of our 
day. Nevertheless, it may exist on compromise only to dis- 
appear. Unless it devotes itself afresh to the life of the Risen 
Lord, which is the true life alike of individuals and of nations, 
it cannot hope to escape the doom that fell upon the Churches 
in Asia Minor. Neither theological orthodoxy nor correct ec- 
clesiastical codes avail without that inward state of the soul 
which is the source of divine wisdom and sacrificial effort. 

The challenge of the Patristic and Medieval periods, if less 
authoritative, is hardly less peremptory than that of the 
Apostolic period. Their needless disparagement ill becomes 
those who would rightly interpret our religious problems. 
Fathers, Pontiffs, Schoolmen, Monastics, Prelates and Can- 
nonists follow on in the processional ranks of eighteen hun- 
dred years, bearing gifts for us as their fellow servants in 
Christ. Each outstanding figure among them is momentarily 
lit by the pale lamp of historic knowledge. Here a great 
preacher passes in review; there a martyr for the Master 
whom he loved; yonder a brave thinker who fared forth into 
new seas of thought. All are helpful to us concerning the 
meaning and the use of liberty; its organic connection with 
the higher freedom of the Spirit, its embodiment in Christi- 
anity, and its applications to every age and condition. Their 
intellectual pedigree was mixed, and many of their ideas and 
plans came to naught by the Will of God. But they with- 
stood the opposition of far-reaching and foul traditions, and 
established the Gospel in an alienated world, non only asa 
doctrine, but as an institution.’ 

Medieval Christianity reiterates its challenge to Protes- 

2Cf. Henry Osborn Taylor: ‘‘ Freedom of the Mind in History.’’ | 


320 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


tantism, because it absolutely refused to be a disembodied re- 
ligion. Monasticism apart, its delight was with the masses, to 
whom it made itself vividly real. It did not covet ethereal re- 
gions beyond human good and evil, from which it looked 
down upon them with the impartiality of the sun which shines 
upon the just and the unjust. It identified itself with the citi- 
zen, and with his temporal and spiritual obligations. Al- 
though the realization of its ideals was backward, the difficult 
task of selecting its basic principles was well to the front. In 
their practice these principles combined Church and State, 
giving Christendom a resemblance to the Kingdom of God on 
earth, which its internal disparities often flatly contradicted. 
But the constant aim of the statesmen of the Middle Ages 
was to maintain an efficient rule and protection for society. 
By this aim they should be judged, and not by their insist- 
ence upon the precedence of the Church. Her supremacy 
did not obsess them, nor did it represent the undivided result 
of their thinking, since Church and State in their conception 
were a solidarity. They were astute and competent men, 
awake to their responsibility for the safety of mankind; pol- 
iticians not easily gulled, who did not live by policy alone. 
Their attempt to build civilization upon a religious founda- 
tion conditioned every habit of their minds, and made them 
both merciless and magnanimous. They had a keen sense of 
human depravity: of its rebellion against righteousness, its 
private incontinence and public lawlessness. They saw it, as 
our century has had to see it, with the mask off, armed, fero- 
cious, severed from moral restraint. They knew that nations 
were very far away from Plato’s dream, in which he compared 
them with a virtuous being of valor, wisdom and temperance. 

The sacerdotalism which alienates Protestantism from the 
Medievalists was a natural expression of their worship. Its 
doctrines bound families and peoples in religious oneness, and 
defended them from the further encroachments of wickedness 
and despair. Priestism had priority because those to whom 
it ministered desired symbolism and not discussion. Learned 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 321 


and simple had an inborn taste for what was artistic or even 
grotesque in religion. Nowhere did their social instinct assert 
itself so strongly as before the Mass, which placed an equal 
value on every soul. It gratifies some Protestants to hear 
that “prophets emancipate the faith which priests enslave;”’ 
but the axiom would have had no meaning for their Mediz- 
val brethren. Even now, it is one of those half-truths which 
is itself untrue. The prevalence of sacerdotalism in every era 
is not explained by such glittering generalities. Be it also re- 
membered that the Middle Ages had their prophets, few in 
number, perhaps, but regnant in faith, who left less for mod- 
ern prophets to forecast than some of us imagine; and with 
them, poets too, whose product, though small, was choice. A 
chaotic period does not need a prophetic so much as a for- 
tressed religion, which shelters men and women from sur- 
rounding distraction and tumult. Such a period was then 
in passage. Its priests took the chains their selected prophets 
had forged, and used them for the discipline of the Divine So- 
ciety. It had to be made conscious of its own past, which her- 
alded its hope and confidence for the future. So long as be- 
lievers must achieve a new being in Jesus Christ, and intermi- 
nable stretches of degraded humanity have to be raised to the 
level which He demands, the priest will continue to be the 
hierophant of sacred mysteries. Christ Himself is the Eter- 
nal Priest; the Church is His Alter Ego; and all Christians 
have a royal priesthood in Him. The abuses of sacerdotalism 
met with swift and condign punishment. But for a millen- 
nium before the Reformation, the peoples of Europe adored 
the saving omnipotence which they believed was enthroned in 
the Eucharist and in the Church.’ 

This was the wonderful achievement of the period that 
we must not underrate. Its challenge rings resonantly across 
the intervening centuries. It says to Protestants: ‘Bring 


3Cf. G.G. Coulton: “Five Centuriesof Religion,’’ p. 100 ff.; ‘‘ Anglican 
Essays,’’ essay on ‘“‘Communion or Mass,’”’ by W. L. Paige-Cox (editor). 
p. 1389 ff. 


O22 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


forth fruit as we did. If you have a purer and a more reason- 
able faith than ours, demonstrate it to mankind. Let St. 
Louis be the pattern of princes and St. Francis of saints; St. 
Bernard the prototype of preachers; and the works of St. 
Thomas the stimulus of a new Christian philosophy. Exter- 
minate the militarism that threatens the ruin of the race, as 
we subdued the wrath of predacious monarchs and barons. 
Rebuke the shifts of deceitful diplomacy, as we rebuked some 
lies that vexed our international peace. Rescue your fellow 
Christians of the Near East from the misrule of Islam, as we 
rescued those of the Danube Valley. Guard the nations we 
first evangelized from going down into the pit. Convert the 
Moslems of Africa, and the Brahmans and Buddhists of Asia, 
as we converted the tribes of Northern Europe. Show your 
proud world of many inventions that it is subject to that Di- 
vine Order, belief in which we instilled into the consciousness 
of our more difficult and blundering world.” 

The present age likewise challenges those Protestants 
who are too much participants in its affairs to understand 
their import. The secular State, for which the Reformation 
was largely responsible, is at a low ebb in ethics; nor can it 
continue to revolve on statecraft alone. Its moral destitution 
is illustrated by a conversation which Sir J. Rennell Rodd 
had in the eighties of the last century with a famous diplo- 
mat who had been used for immoral purposes relative to 
international politics. This official was sensible of the un- 
savory reputation of his employment, and when rallied by 
Rodd about his unsociability he replied suggestively: ‘‘The 
service of the State has spoiled me as a human being.”’ 4 
The confession reveals a condition as abject as any that ob- 
tained in Medizvalism, and one which has been fairly gen- 
eral in temporal hierarchies to which the public was en- 

4 **Social and Diplomatic Memories,’’ pp. 115-116. Sir Francis Bacon} 
centuries before, had written as follows: ‘‘ Men in great place are thrice ser- 
vants; servants of the sovereign or State, servants of fame, and servants of 


business; so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their 
action, nor in their times.”’ 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 320 


slaved. Even in Australia and America, countries to which 
men had looked for the climax of freedom and of industrial 
prosperity, the ideals of the State have faltered.® Alfred 
Deakin, a gifted publicist of the Antipodes, speaks of Liber- 
alism there as ‘“‘a spent force.” Politicians played with its 
name and glorified its shadows. Principles were really ex- 
tinct; civil rule was abandoned to cliques and coteries; to 
the reign of accident or of domineering ability.® Cries and 
catchwords, selfishness and shams, cant and materialism, 
have made havoc of the virtues of democracy. There is all 
too little real love of ideas, of history, or of literature’ among 
well-paid and reasonably leisured artisans and members of 
the commercial classes. Their shrewdness in business is 
noticeable; their mediocrity outside business is equally no- 
ticeable. 

Christianity, not politics, assuredly not the kind of poli- 
tics to which Sir J. Rennell Rodd referred, is the life of the 
State. The false lights and exiguous standards of interna- 
tionalism are highly detrimental to civilization. But how to 
abolish them, and put sound principles of human intercourse 
in their place, is the problem of churches and of nations. 
Arrangements between the theoretical catholicity of the 
Church and the real provincialism of the State are either 
tentative or ineffective. Yet what must not be in these ar- 
rangements can be stated as preparatory for what should 
be. The exceptional privileges of the Church as a temporal 
power are no longer tolerated by free peoples. Whatever 
earthly authority belongs to her has to be won in the loftier 
regions of moral suasion and assent. She may ask for guar- 
antees that her spiritual functions shall not be hampered 
by restrictive political measures. But compliance with this 
request is at the option of the State, and no guarantees can 
violate in the slightest degree the principle of equal laws for 


5 Cf. John Simpson Penman: ‘The Irresistible Movement of Democ- 
racy,’ p. 164 ff. 
6Cf. his ‘‘ Biography’”’ by Walter Murdoch, p. 174 ff. 


324 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


all. This I say, as a friend of all Churches and as a firm 
believer in their present indispensability and future unity. 
I say it also as a believer in that true freedom for the soul 
and circumstances of every individual and nation, which is 
the very breath of the Christian Evangel, and of the Hebrew 
Prophecies. What is more, in a world where distance de- 
creases daily, where ideas circulate with miraculous speed, 
and men’s nearness increases correspondingly, State and 
Church can have no wicked partnerships, and that world 
not know of them. An elevated sense of churchmanship, 
which forbids complicity with the State in anything in- 
imical to Christianity, is our crying need. The multitudes 
may be as wayward and untrustworthy about moral issues 
as Calvin was inclined to think they were. But the Protes- 
tantism that is eventually to mould their beliefs, and retain 
their trust, must not act at the mere solicitation of the State, 
nor from popular desire, but from a far fuller and nobler 
realization of God’s Will for the Church and for humanity 
as a whole. 


II 


Nearly every great conflict that has trampled down man- 
kind was preceded by an era of materialism in which that 
Will apparently was submerged. Christians as well as non- 
Christians forgot, for the time being, that politics are the 
concern of this world, but principles a manifestation of that 
which is to come. The best possibilities of politics are real- 
ized in practice; the truth sought in principles is final and 
eternal. There can be no lasting political good that does 
not proceed from principles which express the Divine in- 
tention for human society. Those principles proceed in turn 
from the realm of spiritual verities of which the Church is 
the visible embodiment. Every legitimate connection, 
therefore, that she sustains to the State is one of moral sin- 
cerity and religious inspiration. She lives that the State 
may live more abundantly in justice, peace and brotherhood. 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 325 


How have these principles and ideals fared during the last 
half-century? The present condition of Europe, to say noth- 
ing of other continents, furnishes a convincing but sadden- 
ing answer to the question. 

During that period extreme violence of thought and ac- 
tion frequently prevailed in the Balkan States, in Turkey, 
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in Central Europe 
generally. The drill sergeant outdid the scholar and the 
cleric. The coarse, second-rate sentiments of junkers, bu- 
reaucrats, chauvinistic officials and journalists menaced the 
good will of nations. Few great thinkers or prophets received 
a thousandth part of the attention given to the ravings of mil- 
itarism. Invocations to battle, and the triumph of the sword 
as the passport to all that honorably befits nations, were the 
stock tenets of nationalistic barbarism. Even the poetry and 
the drama of our yesterdays are full of hacking and hewing; 
of gold-braided uniforms, blood and gunpowder. They are 
grossly brutal, painfully monotonous, without a ray of human 
interest or sympathy to lighten the black shadows of their 
adoration of physical force. To butcher the foe is a heavenly 
enterprise, sanctioned by churchmen who repealed the Ser- 
mon on the Mount for the sake of State conquest and State 
worship. These travesties upon Christianity registered the 
actual situation in Europe. Her fate, and that of half of the 
world besides, lay in the hands of a dozen men more suited 
to the tastes of Tamerlane than to civilized rule. They had 
their day; then the seething volcano exploded, and now they 
have their night, which should be a long one. For us the 
weightiest conclusions are: first, that an international con- 
dition which could permit so stupendous a crime against the 
race was the negation of God; and, second, that it is the 
inescapable obligation of Christians, and of all sane and 
moralized people, to prevent a repetition of the crime. 

Right triumphed, but there were no spoils for the victors. 
They cannot annex, still less can they destroy the defeated 
nations, nor can they make them pay the huge indemnities 


326 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


for irreparable damage done. In the reaction of conflict, 
some of the allied Powers exalt the warlike propensities they 
once execrated, and several of them have more men under 
arms than they had in the spring of 1914. The atmosphere of 
moral steadfastness no longer envelopes Continental Europe. 
Wise and patient statesmen, unhurried, yet not in retreat, 
and never merely opportunist, seem to have vanished from 
the higher councils of mankind. Even while the Washington 
Conference for the reduction of naval armaments was in 
session, the race for war supremacy began afresh, and bids 
fair to commandeer the air for the destructive forces now 
partly excluded from the sea. France recently had one hun- 
dred and forty squadrons of nine planes, each ready for com- 
bat duty. Whereupon Great Britain authorized an annual 
sum of twenty-five million dollars for three years to offset 
France, and she promptly retaliated by providing for two 
hundred and twenty squadrons. Italy, Russia and the 
United States are the latest entrants in this competition 
of death, against which the American veterans of the World 
War have made an official protest. Enough has been said 
for our purpose, and what is said is designedly understated, 
lest the impressions made should be misleading. What an 
appalling revelation of Nationalism’s intrinsic deviltries 
these facts make, and one which moves every Christian 
heart with mingled compassion and indignation! From the 
lands named, Americans derived their religion, language, 
cultural ideas, literature and law. None can witness the 
present helplessness and degradation of Europe without emo- 
tion. Her industries are crippled, her trade is restricted, 
her productive ability is seriously impaired for at least a 
century to come, and her hopes of social betterment are 
similarly postponed. In some of her States dull apathy in 
the midst of decadence, or a senile acquiescence with igno- 
minious conditions, shows how near to dissolution they are. 
Neither the best nor the worst can be readily depicted, and 
as a consequence they cannot be easily appreciated. In 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM O27 


reflecting upon the desolations of godless Nationalism, one 
wonders what Hildebrand would say, could he gaze today 
on the Continent he once dominated? What would be his 
verdict upon the policies that have brought it to the verge of 
ruin? 

The imperative duty of Protestantism is world peace. 
If it will not tolerate such a jurisdiction as Hildebrand’s, 
which is certainly the case, then in God’s Name, let it suggest 
a more efficient jurisdiction of its own. There can be no 
moral or spiritual growth in nations till the causes of war 
are abolished by a united Christian consciousness. All 
Churches should organize and act for this end. They are 
in honor bound to proceed against the “peace of violence” 
which is based upon armaments. It is their duty to ask for 
the withdrawal of armies of occupation and of absurd claims 
and impossible indemnities. They should require the po- 
litical authorities of their respective nations to define and 
codify international law; and by its means make covenants 
which substitute arbitration for combat in the disputes of 
Christian nations. Peace and war are primarily states of 
mind, and until now, peace has been prostituted for the 
continuance of war. The disruption of Europe’s economic 
life is only symptomatic of her ethical disruption. Here 
churchmen have their sphere of action, which they ought 
unhesitatingly to appropriate. The task of world recon- 
struction is laid upon civilization at large, but its heavy end 
rests upon those historic Churches which have bred great 
nations and fostered their sense of superiority. They are 
now in the rather enviable position of choosing their own 
future. Should they undertake to restore to decent and 
righteous behavior the States they largely created, Protes- 
tantism will, in my judgment, enter upon an era of vigorous 
health which it has never yet known. As things are, it must 
follow the restorative policy, cost what it may, or lose its 
moral control over human society. One does not have to 
indulge either the needless fears which defeat good sense, or 


328 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


the wild conjectures which outrun possibility. But a care- 
ful consideration of the latent and active forces of Protes- 
tantism convinces me that it can and should coalesce for the 
readjustment of Christendom. 


Ii 


Coalition of this kind is suspected by political Protestants 
who imagine that nearly all civic benefits began with the 
Reformation. As we have hinted, the results of that Move- 
ment had their shady side. The defederalization of Europe 
left much good in question, and much evil entrenched. After 
the dramatic disappearance of Medieval Imperialism, a sen- 
sible separation of vital interests deeply affected both Church 
and State. The distrust of a world society was not stayed 
for centuries, and the wars of nations kept pace with that 
distrust. The England of George I was very little larger in 
population than that of Edward II; the subjects of Henry 
VIII were no more intelligent nor humane than those of 
Edward I; the Parliament of Henry was probably the most 
servile in the history of the Island Kingdom. On the Con- 
tinent the segregated provinces of the Mediterranean and 
of the Rhine Valley experienced reversals, from which the 
latter regions had not recovered when Napoleon I crushed 
Prussia at Jena. 

Nationalism has also an upper side which presents to men 
the highest freedom of Christianity. This freedom could 
not be the source of personal and social righteousness, or of 
the justice that deals with nations as it does with individuals, 
were it not untrammeled. It is the liberty of the sons of 
God, which they enjoy in heart, reason and conscience 
through faith in Christ. No lower forms of authority should 
be allowed to usurp its sway over the entire life of Christian 
citizenship. For Protestants, the principles, not the forms 
of political government are the vital matter. As they view 
the Church, she is interested, not in monarchy or republi- 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 329 


canism as such, but in their application of those principles. 
The rights and obligations she upholds are sacred and in- 
violable, and cannot be changed nor compromised by the 
dictates of political democracies, any more than by the de- 
crees of despots. Here, as I see it, the Protestantism which 
aecepts the challenge of the New Testament Faith must 
always resist theories that msist on the sovereignty of the 
democratic State as the organ of the Popular Will. May 
that Will always conform to righteous standards. But when 
it does not, the Christian’s course is clear. The decisions 
of Democracy have not reversed, nor will they ever reverse, 
the decision of Christ’s disciples that His Church alone de- 
termines the nature and the application of her own religious 
convictions and _ beliefs.’ 

The radiations of His Soul in her membership today 
cast new light upon this question, specifically as it relates 
to internationalism. The ultimate goal of nations is that 
Christianized Brotherhood which means nothing less than 
a fit habitation for human beings on earth. It matters 
not what forms the internationalism shall assume, nor what 
are the proximate affections and objects of Protestants. 
Their final aim, and that of all believers, is found in the 
prayer: “Thy Kingdom come.” Since it must come, why 
should the Reformed Churches not hasten its coming, and 
desist from useless attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable 
elements of human society with that Kingdom? The people 
at large have not lost sight of this paramount issue. They 
narrowly observe our attitude toward it, and their support 
ean be obtained for those Churches which move against the 
miquities of unlicensed Nationalism with all possible fervor. 
This duty belongs to them, nor can it be devolved upon 
statesmen and diplomatists. They may negotiate success- 
fully with other countries; know what to do, and when not 
to doit. These are delicate arts that require a special train- 


7 Cf. William Adams Brown: ‘“‘Imperialistic Religion and the Religion of 
Democracy,” p. 136 ff. 


330 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


ing as much as law or surgery. But the Church, as such, 
knows no foreign countries; her field is the world; she exists 
to pull down barriers, to foster in men and nations the fra- 
ternity which banishes their alien tendencies. The very 
word foreign is a reflection upon the catholicity of her Evan- 
gel. Can she meet this test? Can she absorb patriotism 
into a suprapatriotism? Can her love for any land relate 
its good to that of all mankind; and restrain its selfishness 
so that it shall not injure mankind? This is the crucial ques- 
tion for Protestantism in the twentieth century. 

Economic and other domestic problems are open to these 
reasonings. Too often the logic of industrial disputes is 
applied without regard to the truer social conscience. Pub- 
lic welfare is so constantly usurped by the quarrels of cor- 
porations, employers and employees, that when wars cease, 
we are almost worse confounded in peace. As we have al- 
ready seen, the Reformed Faith is usually associated with 
commercial States and their industrial pursuits. When 
those who conduct them hide behind legislation in which 
there is too much scope for wealthy malefactors or unscru- 
pulous laborites, the practice disgusts the public, and shows 
that law can be one thing and justice another. The enforce- 
ment of legal rights at the expense of natural rights must 
not be countenanced by the Churches. But until the Fed- 
eral Council was instituted, they were hindered by their 
lack of an efficient organization, and could not contend with 
those who, 


“Trusting to crowded factory and mart 
And proud discoveries of the intellect, 
Heed not the pillage of man’s ancient heart.’ 


The latest and one of the best verdicts of Christianity and 
Judaism combined against social injustice is, that ‘‘bad mor- 
als can never be good economics.’”’ Valuable in itself, this 
truth is even more valuable because it shows the possibilities 
for social justice contained in concerted action, and also the 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 331 


changed bearing of the church upon industrial controversies. 
But bad morals will persist to the undoing of good eco- 
nomics unless unified Christian action proves too strong for 
them. Should Protestantism, alive to the danger, direct 
its onpressing energies against open wrongs, it can, with the 
help of all believers in justice, clear the economic jungle of 
its beasts of prey. Yet the jungle will not be transformed 
into the Lord’s garden, where toil is welcome, until His winds 
have breathed upon it the life from above. The new social 
order is not to be ushered in by blows, nor hewn out after 
the fashion of the sword, nor tempered on anvils of steel. 
Those who shall introduce tt, Jew or Gentile, Catholic or 
Protestant, must stand Godward and together, interpret- 
ing its requirements with the vision of faith, with “the pa- 
tience of passion,” with “the signet of love for a seal.” 
Further, the divisions we have noted between classes and 
nations are largely caused by the fundamental separation 
between the temporal and the eternal. So long as men avidly 
desire the perishable, arbitrary divisions will perists in so- 
ciety. Nowhere is this maladjustment more palpable than 
in public education, which, next to religion, is the making 
or unmaking of individuals and of States. The American 
citizen demands mastery over his local circumstances, and 
any knowledge which does not readily lend itself to that 
mastery is likely to be discounted by him. It is also the 
settled policy of our Republic that religious knowledge, 
which involves religious control, must be excluded from the 
public schools, and that such control furnishes the constitu- 
tional basis for its exclusion. The democratization of Amer- 
ica’s citizenship, we are informed, is essential to its peace 
and welfare. Its self-government centers around political 
ideas upon which rightminded men and women are supposed 
to agree. The Constitution, the State, and its common mind 
are thus closely related to public education. But since men 
differ about nothing else as they do about religion, it cannot 
be taught in any institution supported by general taxation. 


Jo2 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


This doctrine derives its strength quite as much from sec- 
tarian disputes as from political necessities. Those who 
encourage sectarianism must share the onus, if it be such, 
for the secular system of education which many of them 
deplore. I need not say that the service rendered to the 
State by the public school is beyond praise. It has assimi- 
lated countless numbers of foreign born and native Ameri- 
cans, and imbued the rank and file of our countrymen with 
some of the best tenets of citizenship. As an institution it 
has boundless significance, and a record of well-nigh unpar- 
alleled devotion to the public good, which endear it to the 
heart of the nation. Until the last ten years adverse criti- 
cism of it was resented as bordering on sedition. 

Today a challenge which Protestantism cannot ignore 
comes from educational quarters. Many supporters of the 
public school ask if the concessions made by institutional 
religion to the democratic theory of education promote the 
benefit of either. They wonder if the soul of all improve- 
ment is not still in the improvement of the soul. If the fear 
of God is the beginning of wisdom, and the love of Him is 
the crown of wisdom, what truer orientation can be given 
to education than these emotions supply? Moreover, if 
religion separates people, certainly neither education nor 
politics solidify them. The solidarity of the nation is spirit- 
ual, not intellectual, nor political. It belongs to the soul 
of the Republic, where a civic love that surpasses knowledge 
must be enshrined. Yet sectional, sectarian and religious 
prejudices have seldom been more lusty and agressive than 
they are at the present time. Not since the Civil War have 
citizens banded against each other in matters of blood and 
belief as they do today, and this, notwithstanding the 
prevalence of secular education. One of the weightiest 
arguments against its continuance is presented by some of 
its ardent supporters. Despite their attachment to the pub- 
lic school as the premier institution for democratization, these 
partisans live and act apart to perpetuate discord and hatred. 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 330 


Others who have received untold benefits from the State 
antagonize its methods of government. Secularists in edu- 
cation to a man, and resentful of any attempts to introduce 
religion into the public school, they nevertheless berate what 
they call Anglo-Saxon domination, and predict the eclipse 
of some of its best traditions. Men and women whose an- 
cestors did not succeed in self-government in the lands from 
which they came, here remain apart in heart, if not in appear- 
ance. Unused to freedom, not always justly treated, sus- 
picious of law, opposed to all religion, and inclined to be- 
little its influence in our political history, they associate 
democratic liberty with the absence of spiritual discipline. 
Another group of secularists in education makes a sorry 
showing in citizenship. Not community spirit, but crass 
individualism is their ideal. To get on whoever falls off; 
to shift responsibility from themselves to the State; to place 
a premium on commercial success; to procure the maximum 
of self-indulgence at the minimum of personal risk, are their 
distinctive traits. Since the types I have sketched are in- 
creasing, especially in large cities; and the secular policy 
which they uphold does not provide a sufficient ethic for 
the State, it is the deliberate Judgment of numerous Amer- 
icans, whose patriotism cannot be questioned, that the pol- 
icy should be modified.® 


IV 


The relaxation of the religious bond in the United States 
is a further challenge to Protestantism. Its Gospel, from 
the human side, is right conduct taught and justified. But 
over 50,000,000 Americans out of a population of 110,000,- 
000 belong to no Church, and seldom hear the Gospel; while 
millions more who are church members take their vows very 


8Cf. Francis G. Peabody: ‘‘ The Religious Education of an American 
Citizen ’’; John Dewey: ‘‘ Democracy and Education”’; Henry Frederick 
Cope: “ Education for Democracy.” 


334 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


lightly. The antagonisms of thought, aim and situation 
existing in these incalculable numbers of highly individual- 
ized people, bent on taking their destinies into their own 
hands, cannot be removed by any single Church. The task 
would monopolize all the Churches and their efforts at their 
best. But they are unable to discharge it efficiently because 
less than one half of the 53,000,000 children and adolescents 
in this nation are enrolled in religious schools, and three out 
of every five Protestant children receive no definite religious 
training. In 1916 the enrollment in Protestant Bible Schools 
was 21,886,521; in 1920 it had shrunk to 15,617,060, a 
decrease of 6,269,461 in four years. The children of ortho- 
dox Jews get upon the average 354 hours of religious in- 
struction annually; Roman Catholic children receive 200 
hours annually; Protestant children 24 hours annually, or 
less than half an hour a week.? The problem is a moral one, 
and cannot be stated in statistics. They show, however, that 
Protestantism is the heaviest contributor to the secular 
policy in national education. Admirable efforts to overcome 
its menace are made by the Bible Schools and kindred organi- 
zations. The Universities, Colleges, Young Men’s Christian 
Associations, Young Women’s Christian Associations, Sum- 
mer Schools and Conferences have done valiantly. But 
notwithstanding their exertions, secularism has stormed 
every defense and spread throughout the land. The marked 
absence of wise restraint in certain sections of society 
is usually charged to neglect of religion, and is commented 
upon by numerous clergymen and other public servants. 
It is not clearly determined how much or little of the 
havoc which the lack of such restraint causes is due to 
Protestant concessions to secularism for the sake of dem- 
ocracy. But that serious evils exist compatible with those 
concessions is demonstrated by the facts. 


9Cf. ‘The Religious Education of Protestants in an American Com- 
monwealth.’’ The Indiana Survey of Religious Education made under the 
direction of Professor Walter S. Athearn. 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 330 


There are many things to be said for secular education. 
Its defenders assert that the vitality and freedom of the 
public school depend upon its absolute independence of 
religious control. The cure for the ills of its liberty is more 
liberty; for the ills of its knowledge, is more knowledge. 
Under this plea, secularists annex institutions in which cas- 
ual references to religion are still made. Colleges and 
schools founded by churchmen have passed beyond de- 
nominational supervision; others endeavor to get rid of it. 
Those that remain under it are prone to apologize for their 
position. Their critics speak of denominational institutions 
of learning as though they were necessarily inferior. The 
consciousness of a crippling sectarianism rankles in some of 
these foundations. The parochial schools of Roman Catholi- 
cism are quoted as standing examples of educational back- 
wardness due to clerical supervision. The stigma is denied 
by those who have charge of the parochial schools, which 
they assert must comply with the tests and requirements 
fixed by the State, and applying to all public schools. Why 
religious teaching should dwarf the intellectual life, either 
of children or adults, is not apparent at a glance. But Cath- 
olics and Protestants who insist that their doctrines must 
be regarded as Christianity’s most perfect forms, with which 
no secular learning can be allowed to interfere, help to ex- 
plain the disparagement. The unwillingness of Christians 
to agree upon the truths of their Faith further complicates 
the issue, and strengthens the position of those who would 
exclude religious teaching from the schools. Scholars and 
scientists who regard all creeds as negligible lay the short- 
comings of society at the door of sheer ignorance. Cleanse 
education, they say, of exploded traditions and antiquated 
ways of thinking, and the unfettered mind will bring in a 
better era. Not a few of these authorities maintain that the 
late war demonstrated the incompetency of nearly all the 
older methods of instruction. This is an assumption not 
generally admitted. Many believe that a Christianized edu- 


336 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


cational system might have prevented the war, and it is cer- 
tain that the scientific knowledge of advanced States greatly 
augmented its horrors. Nor were some of those States 
ignorant of the meanings of modern war, but they rushed into 
it under the delusion that it could be made profitable to them. 

A further objection to religious education at the expense 
of the State is taken from past enormities done in the name 
of religion. For years the sword was scarcely laid aside in 
France, or in the low Provinces; nor in the Rhine Palatinate 
for a single month. In the streets of Paris; at Arques, Cou- 
tras and Ivry, blood flowed in torrents to expiate the infa- 
mies of St. Bartholomew’s massacre. The animus behind the 
Thirty Years’ War, and behind that of the Puritans against 
the Stuarts, was religious as much as political in its essence. 
The heroical struggle of Holland to throw off Spain’s re- 
ligious tyranny is engraved on the memory of freedom-loving 
peoples. Frequently these conflicts left no faith, no honor, no 
mercy, in the States they ravaged. Italian treachery grafted 
on French daring, or Spanish dourness matched against Dutch 
tenacity, proved capable of dreadful deeds. The Cromwell- 
ians who swept the field of battle did not govern constitu- 
tionally. The divine right of kings, taught for centuries in 
nearly every Protestant and Roman Catholic school of 
Kurope, was the curse of freedom till it finally wore itself 
out. If, therefore, we would forestall the possibility of a re- 
vival of these complications, which filled men with a bestial 
ingenuity for vengeance, we are urged to keep the American 
publie school entirely separate from all religious systems and 
their agents. These, it is said, should impart their instruc- 
tion through the Churches, the home, and other domestic 
channels. 

The appeal to history is well taken, provided there has 
been no change in the relation of the Churches since the sey- 
enteenth century. Do Christians still hate each other for 
the love of God as they did then? Is every advocate of re- 
ligious instruction given in the public schools a disguised 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 300 


enemy seeking to secure State funds for divisive ends? Then 
the only thing to do is to exclude them from the public 
schools. But Americans of the highest character, Protes- 
tants, Catholics, laymen and clerics, are exceedingly anxious 
that religious instruction shall become a part of the educa- 
tional program of the Republic. Their differences arise, 
not from the principle at stake, but from the methods 
of its application. Until they can agree upon what to 
teach, and who shall teach it, it is better to continue the 
present system, than it would be to precipitate a renewed 
fight about what some of us believe to be non-essentials of 
religion. Whichever policy may eventually obtain, neither 
the good nor the harm predicted by partisans is likely to 
ensue. Quiet discussion, with less heat and more light, 
would brighten the prospect for a settlement of this pro- 
longed controversy. But prejudice still spins its process, 
and many harbor sectarian beliefs only to confuse them with 
universal principles; while the children, who should be our 
first concern, are untaught in the truths that have made the 
moral eminence of America. One can well believe that its 
democracy is equal to the emergency. For a hundred and fifty 
years it has stood for equality as resolutely as for freedom. It 
has mitigated ancient enmities, guaranteed intelligent inter- 
course, and promoted the interchange of opinions on contro- 
verted matters. Our citizens havereached a common mind on 
major questions about which they formerly differed, and even 
fought. The Union is one and indissoluble; it rests on the 
fealty and good-will of forty-eight sister Commonwealths. 
Its citizens heartily believe in education, though they do 
not always appreciate, as they should, its true nature and 
purposes. But the majority understand that it is given 
primarily for the foundation of character; for the moral 
discipline which should come before all knowledge; for the 
spiritual culture to which scholarship is but an accessory, 
for the truer insight and broader vision that see behind learn- 
ing the wisdom it is meant to inculcate, 


338 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


If these ends are to receive, without coercion of any man’s 
conscience, the aid of religious instruction, those who ac- 
cept them must arrive at a definite agreement which is not 
yet in sight. Nor will it be sighted so long as they re- 
main within the confines of their several creeds. Protestants 
who are opposed to the whims and fancies of formalists and 
theorists upon education, should defend their deposit of the 
Christian Faith in the spirit of charity toward all men. How 
can they do this successfully, however, while reactionaries 
nurse a useless feud against scientific learning, and assail 
truths which are taught in every self-respecting school and 
college? No medieval prelate was ever more rampant 
against non-conforming believers than are the men to whom 
I refer, against scholars and teachers who dare to differ with 
them. Competent instructors have been harassed, cross-ex- 
amined, and in some instances, summarily dismissed, because 
they would not deny themselves, nor submit to the behests of 
eloquent ignorance, or of legislatures and boards of man- 
agement susceptible to its sophisticated utterances. A more 
detestable wrong has seldom been inflicted upon American 
education by sincere but mistaken zealots, nor is their con- 
scientiousness an extenuating plea. What has made bigots 
and persecutors dangerous to their fellow men if not their 
conviction that they were always right? The unrighteous 
sin and go to their own place. But who shall estimate the 
iniquity which the righteous do? Will those who in this case 
seek to stifle knowledge display the leadership which na- 
tional education requires today? Can they deliver it from 
skepticism on the one hand, and from superstition on the 
other? They are far more likely to pervert it with creedal 
futilities and untutored emotionalism. 

The responsibility for Christian education, and for the 
intellectual progress inseparable from it, is upon Protestant- 
ism as a whole so far as its own constituency is concerned. 
That responsibility 1s being met by the long list of its insti- 
tutions and agencies, which are as opposed to godless 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 309 


knowledge as they are to pious obscurantism. Those 
who sustain them understand that one brainy rascal is 
a greater menace to the State than a thousand simple 
but honest and industrious citizens. They maintain that 
faith can be blended with learning to the enrichment of both. 
They teach lawfulness as the realization of liberty. They 
convey the advantages of religious education to hundreds of 
thousands of graduates who, in their turn, communicate 
those advantages to the Republic. It is not shut up to the 
extremes of secularism or reactionism. It is large enough 
to encompass all knowledge contributory to wisdom and 
character. It has not even the remotest idea of submission 
to a combination of Church and State in education or in 
aught else, such as paralyzed Medieval Imperialism. Its 
present mind seems to be that religious education in the 
public schools must be predetermined by religious unity 
in the Churches. Until this is advanced, the status quo will 
obtain. And unless Protestants and Roman Catholics would 
open a Pandora’s box, they must adjust their differences 
before they attempt any extensive changes in the nation’s 
educational system. 


V 


Perhaps the highest evidence which Protestantism can 
offer that New Testament Christianity is its sustaining au- | 
thority, is in its spirit and temper toward the non-Protestant 
world. No intellectual outlook, however ardent, furnishes 
a sufficient incentive for a conquering Faith. This must be 
rooted and grounded in love for those who are beyond the 
pale./' Hate of anything. save-sin.is the gangrene of of religion. | 
One is forcibly reminded of these verities in “dealing with 
that ancient rival whose challenge ceaselessly resounds every- 
where: the Roman Catholic Church against which our fathers 
revolted. Here a unique opportunity is presented for what 
the Apostle calls ‘“‘truthing it in love,” especially in the 


340 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


United States, where a very vigorous Protestantism and 
Catholicism exist side by side, and share the same civic du- 
ties and responsibilities. Both these divisions of Western 
Christianity are fortunate enough to have far-sighted leaders 
who, when deeply touched by the greatest concerns, feel 
and think alike about them. Love of God, of Christ, of the 
Church, of the Bible; and a warm response to the appeal 
of holy living, characterize the best Protestants and Catho- 
lies. Could they be multiplied indefinitely, the rapproche- 
ment which now seems too remote to be practicable might 
be materially advanced. As the facts are, Catholics and 
Protestants are separated by a formidable barrier of varying 
beliefs which give proposals for their union a doctrinaire 
tang. In English-speaking nations there has been a dimi- 
nution of the difficulties between them. The Anglo-Catholic 
Movement, its forerunner, Oxford Tractarianism, and the 
renaissance of Medisval ideas now prevalent in Europe and 
America, have done much to overcome ecclesiastical msular- 
ity. But these two great bodies of Christians meet every- 
where without any instinctive contact of spirit. Their pro- 
longed quarrel strikes the depressing note of an almost 
permanent dislocation of institutional Christianity. Com- 
bative partisans of both kinds describe one another in George 
Meredith’s lines: 


“Trim swordsmen they push forth; yet by thy steel, 
Thou, fighting for poor human kind, wilt feel 
The strength of Roland in thy wrist, to hew 
A chasm sheer into the barrier rock, 
And bring the army of the faithful through.” 


Since no church is a pure precipitate of New Testament 
teaching, Protestants can be content to let the militancy of 
this stanza subside. God reigns in the Churches; their purity 
or impurity, strength or weakness, are more evenly distrib- 
uted than many concede. Catholicism is so completely organ- 
ized that it is sensitive to the least rupture. Protestantism 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM O41 


is so loosely organized that its fabric dissolves into the 
more than two hundred sects which bear its name in this 
nation alone. Yet how much Catholicism is latent in Pro- 
testantism, how much Protestantism is reciprocal in Cath- 
olicism, and how greatly indebted both are to Hebraism! 
When the corporate life of Christianity is viewed in its rela- 
tion to the human race, it is apparent that the Faith we 
hold could not dispense with either of its two great Western 
divisions, and that the destruction of one would probably 
entail that of the other. The enforced tolerance which does 
not become them should give place to a cordial intercourse in 
which controversies can be amicably entertained. Before 
both lies the non-Christian world, with its countless antag- 
onisms and agonies, always there, eagerly waiting for the Gos- 
pel of Redemption and Brotherhood, which these Churches 
have received from the Saviour of mankind and which they 
are under a solemn obligation to proclaim. In that world, 
and not in theological or ecclesiastical warfare, is the theater, 
as it seems to me, of any approximate agreements between 
them.” 

Their divergencies are created by opposing estimates. 
The Protestant looks upon Catholicism as an inexplicable 
system, entangled in a mesh of inconsistencies and erro- 
neous assumptions. He conceives it stultified by the spirit 
of progress, opposed to scientific inquiry, to advanced civ- 
ilization, and to the independence of the State. The Catho- 
lic, on the other hand, regards his religion as the only one 
having the plenitude of divine authority. For him, it is 
peerless in spiritual sanction, in loveliness and in vision. 
He points to its worship in all countries through the medium 
of a classic language, as an evidence of its universality and 
antiquity. By means of that worship nations are welded 
into one Faith, despite the separative forces of race and tem- 
perament, climate and speech. Their various characters and 
political organizations are not the sole determinants of their 

10 Cf, Charles R. Brown: ‘‘ The Larger Faith,” p. 157 ff. 


342 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


destiny. The missionary activities of his Church, from the 
time of Europe’s conversion to the present propaganda of the 
Jesuits, are eulogized by him. She has also founded chari- 
table institutions in every land, and her priesthood has never 
been known to retreat when any peril threatened the flock. 
These and other proofs of her divine nature and mission as 
the solely sufficient Church satisfy Roman adherents. Such 
a system, they aver, must eventually overcome all opposition 
and govern the religious beliefs of the earth. Its doctrines, as 
they apprehend them, are a closely woven yet comprehen- 
sive development of Biblical teaching in which no flaw can 
be found. The Spirit of God has inspired their symmetrical 
philosophy of the supreme religion. He still presides over 
its necessities, and speaks through the voice of the Sovereign 
Pontiff on all questions of faith and order. 

Students of comparative religion, who are not of Rome, 
refer to the mingled firmness and flexibility of Catholicism, 
and to its remarkable knowledge of human needs and in- 
firmities. Its representative teachers remind us that it does 
not forbid the right of private judgment, except when such 
judgment trespasses upon the supremacy of the Church in 
matters of dogma. She condemns Modernism because it 
does so trespass, as an offense, not in itself alone, but still 
more for its tacit resistance to the Holy See. Here the Cath- 
olic, though he be as learned as Acton or Déllinger, or as 
brilliant as Tyrrell, arrives at the terminus.!! He is relieved 
of any necessity to find for himself the way to eternal life 
for which the Church is his one and only guide. ‘“‘My breth- 
ren,”’ said Cardinal Mercier, in his pastoral issued for the 
enforcement of the Papal Encyclical of 1907, “we have here 
merely the question of honesty: yes, or no? Do you be- 
lieve the divine authority of the Church? Do you accept 
exteriorly and interiorly what in the Name of Jesus Christ 
she proposes to your belief: yes, or no? If yes, then she puts 


11 Cf, George Tyrrell: ‘Christianity at the Cross Roads’’; M. D. Petrie: 
“Modernism.” 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 343 


the Sacraments at your disposal, and undertakes your safe 
conduct to Heaven. If no, you deliberately break the bond 
that united you to her, of which she had tied and blessed 
the knot. Before God and your conscience you belong to 
her no more.” These words are explicitness itself. They 
have the refreshing lucidity of a first class mind. The dis- 
cipline they exact could not exist for its own sake. Were 
it not prolific of spiritual compensations, men and women 
would not submit to its regimen. 

Its inhibitions are viewed by Protestants as an unwar- 
ranted invasion of intellectual and moral rights. But to the 
Catholic, they present an unanswerable argument for the 
surrender of those rights. Obedience to the Church is synony- 
mous with his soul’s deliverance and purification from sin. 
Her infallibility throws its egis around his errors; her con- 
servation of doctrine is forever superior to those which in- 
dividual or sectarian opinions supply. Hence the rewards 
of Catholicism are mystical and eternal; it emphasizes the 
unseen; it enunciates a creed of life rather than of thought. 
Its human side is more advanced than its literary side; 
it chastens the mind to enrich the heart. Theological 
speculations once nearly wrecked the Pontificate, so they 
are now beneath its edicts. Other interests of mortal 
existence are carefully economized in behalf of its trans- 
cendental aspects. Souls given either to misanthropy or 
to ecstasy, to submission or to worship, find Catholicism 
congenial to their longings and emotions. Those who have 
grown weary of efforts to formulate their own beliefs; those 
also who fear the overweening pressure of materialism; and 
the lesser natures which are drawn to elaborate rites, flee to 
Catholicism as their city of refuge and temple of devotion.” 

Protestants complain of the rank undergrowth of Cath- 
olic communities, in which, as they assert, there is no breadth 


12 Cf. Cardinal Newman: ‘Apologia Pro Vita Sua’’; ‘‘Life of Cardinal 
Gibbons”? by Allen Sinclair Will; ‘Ignatius Loyola’’ by Henry Dwight 
Sedgwick. 


344 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


of survey, no courageous criticism, no intellectual idealism: 
nothing but a drudgery of routine in prescribed ordinances. 
Yet many Catholics whom I have known, and who are chari- 
tably disposed toward Protestantism, have testified to the cer- 
titude, the joy, the peace and consolation, which their beliefs 
inspire in them. Whatever may be urged against the static 
condition of Catholic dogma, since the Pontificate of Leo 
XIII, a notable series of Encyclicals against greed, social 
oppression and war, or in behalf of lawfulness and sobriety, 
has come out of the Vatican. The Catholic Church, not- 
withstanding her innate conservatism, and her instinctive 
dislike of Communism, has ranged herself against arbitrary 
class privilege and influence. For reasons which Rome has 
doubtless carefully weighed, she deems the betterment of 
the people more important for her and for the world than 
the preservation of its plutocracies. Yet in the complexity 


of her vast organization, with its multitudinous concerns, — 


she also acts for the stabilization of society, and for the 
protection of property rights. 

Protestantism, in the main, is sundered as the poles from 
Catholicism’s ideals and methods of religious propaganda. Its 
informed members tolerate every school of thought in its de- 
nominational range, and give preéminence to freedom of in- 
quiry and statement. Its intellectualism is at once its 
strength and its weakness. Emphatically, it is the re- 
ligion of liberty, and in its advanced phases, of the open 
mind. But with equal emphasis, z¢ 7s a religion. It pene- 
trates behind the sciences which are caviare to the gen- 
eral; behind metaphysics and their schools, first, into the 
realm of ethics, and next, into that of faith. Its ap- 
proved moral standards are untainted by casuistry; aus- 
terely insistent upon what is just; and, as such, are recog- 
nized, even when not obeyed, as final. Spiritual realities are 
dealt with directly and simply. Every Protestant is his 
own priest, and himself makes the offering of his heart to his 
Maker. Immediate contact with God through Christ is ob- 


“tn 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 045 


tained by repentance and faith. These evangelical traits are 
by no means characteristic of all Protestants, but they are 
the norm by which their religion should be judged. Nor are 
they confined to denominations which assume the name 
Evangelical as though they had a patent for it. On the 
contrary, they prevail in all the sects, and some minor ones 
are conspicuous for their possession. As in the well-known 
instance of the Moravian Brethren, their spirituality is fra- 
grant, and their numbers are by no means commensurate 
with the wide and salutary influence which they exert. It is 
perhaps clear to us that the basis of the Reformed Faith is 
not a mediating Church, but a mediating Redeemer; not a 
book nor an organization, but a Person and a Life. Believers 
who obey that Person have a religious freedom conducive 
to some of the divinest meanings of that Life. They show the 
““ineffability’’, which Professor James noted as one of the 
four hall-marks of a mystical Faith. Their experience of 
religion is verified by the witness of the Church at large. 
Underneath denominational varieties, as the earth’s strata 
are underneath its fauna and flora, is a consciousness of 
God in Jesus Christ which is the invincible citadel of Prot- 
estantism. 

Saints have hallowed Catholicism and Protestantism in 
every period of their history. The modern age has been 
illuminated by their lives shining like a golden path across 
the sea; a path for angels to walk upon, that led straight 
into the City of the Blessed One. I have but to mention 
Josephine Butler of London, 8. F. Collier of Manchester, A. 
J. Lyman of Brooklyn, James M. Thoburn of India, David 
Hill of China, James W. Bashford of the farther East, Father 
Damien of the leper colony of Molokai, and Cardinal Gib- 
bons of our country, to assure you that according to Cardinal 
Newman’s argument, the Church that produces sanctified 
souls still stands in the Apostolic Succession. The beauty 
of their holiness casts its spell over old and young, and over 

13 Cf, ‘‘ The Varieties of Religious Experience,’ p. 380. 


346 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


the quickest or the slowest intelligences. Their spontaneous 
grace and goodness check the disputatious mind. In them 
we see the promise of better things ahead, when the non- 
Christian world now buried in darkness shall know that 
Christ came forth from God to give it light because His 
Church is one and indivisible in Him. While the genera- 
tions of believers await that triumph, let us hold the truth 
in love, and state our reasons for difference with dignified 
fidelity, but without churlishness. ‘‘There will come a 
time,” said a great Anglican divine, ‘‘when three words ut- 
tered in charity shall receive a more blessed reward than 
three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness 
of wit.” '* Have that time in mind, when the one flock 
shall be enfolded by the one Shepherd. Resolve that while 
brave for beliefs dear to you, it shall be yours to say at the 
last that wheresoever the divine spark glowed on other altars 
than your own, there your prayers were breathed to fan 
it to a still higher flame. 


VI 


To an impartial observer it would seem that Christianity’s 
schisms could well be ignored, in the presence of atheistical 
Socialism, and of the aggressiveness of Moslem religion in 
the world. The challenge of Gandhi, the Hindu Reformer, is 
likewise heard, not only in India, but throughout the East, 
and also in Christian lands. Reverenced by his countrymen 
as a hero and a prophet, he bids them avoid Western civiliza- 
tion as they would a plague. Its medicine is black art, its 
surgery is butchery, its material benefits asphyxiate the spir- 
itual values of Hinduism, its scientific achievements are a 
mockery, and its religion fatally deficient in moral concepts.” 


14 Richard Hooker: ‘‘ Ecclesiastical Polity,’’ (Everyman’s Library Edi- 
tion) p. 94. 

15 Cf. Sir Valentine Chirol: ‘‘India Old and New’’; J. N. Farquhar: 
‘“Modern Religious Movements in India;’’ Dhan Lopal Mukerji: ‘‘ Caste 
and Outcast’; R. Tagore: “‘ Creative Unity.” 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 347 


But Gandhi has to give way for hyperbolic denunciations to 
Stepanoff, the Russian Red, who insists that Christianity’s 
creeds cast a halo around the ever present hell of human mis- 
ery. The Hindu’s polemicis more persuasive than the wild 
ravings of the Marxian Soviet. Yet the evaluations of 
Sovietism and of Gandhi’s refined Hinduism are jaded. They 
will run their course and disappear. Before this happens, 
however, they may prove to be the parents of a long progeni- 
ture, which will challenge Protestantism’s future in the Hast. 

The contingencies set forth here do not come from a world 
of shadowy abstractions, but from one of ponderable things, 
which must be clearly understood by those who take definite 
action upon them. Not a few people doubt if any action can 
be taken. Others question if institutional religion can sur- 
vive the universal disaffection and its momentous changes. 
And the cynic who tells us that ‘we are all brothers now: all 
Cains and Abels,” is vocal with libels upon the whole race. 
What feasible measures can be pushed ahead? First of all, 
Protestants should a. one to what degree their religion is 
responsible for those breaches and divisions of organized so- 
ciety which have created its chronic feeling of insecurity. 
For if Christianity means anything it means the brave accep- 
tance of life in the earnest expectation of more and better 
life to come. The strife that fills society today is the result, 
to a large degree, of the insufficiency of Christian Churches 
as vehicles of that saving grace which is pent up behind the 
scanty outlets they have hitherto furnished for it. But be- 
fore attempting to answer the question of Protestant respon- 
sibility for this insufficiency, it should be said that the deepest 
separation between human beings is made by their possession 
or non-possession of the believing mind. This mind owes no 
fealty to the empirical distinctions for which men shed blood, 
save as those distinctions help it to prevail. It is a volun- 
tary mind, self-imposed, confined to no race and to no creed. 
Christian and non-Christian are included within its scope. 
All who accept the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of 


048 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


man, and the spiritual interpretation of life, belong to it. 
They compose the inner society of love, of service and of sac- 
rifice, which we must steadily keep before us. Should Prot- 
estants who regard their sectarian peculiarities as supreme, 
attempt to act as though such a society does not and cannot 
exist outside their little bounds, they will discover that the 
healing of mankind is not assigned by God to them. 

In this connection, it cannot be denied that Protestantism 
has had its disintegrating side. It has built up States, 
founded Churches, missionized distant and dark territories, 
and led the educational developments of the past four hun- 
dred years, But it has also split institutional religion into 
many fragments, and some Protestants assert that this is its 
most admirable deed. Yet if the failure of Medicvalism is 
traceable to its attempts to transform the Church into a sec- 
ular society, the failure of Protestanism is not less traceable 
to its attempts to make the Church subservient to secular 
society. If the Medixval Church consciousness exceeded 
legitimate boundaries, the Church consciousness of Protestant- 
ism has retreated too far from the ideal of the New Testa- 
ment. How could that retreat be avoided in view of the 
origin and history of Protestantism? Its founders never 
agreed about the essential nature of the Church, nor has any 
unanimous agreement been reached since their day. 

The first conception of her being as invisible, consisting of 
the redeemed whose union is mystical, the visible ministry of 
the preached Word, and the due observance of the Sacra- 
ments, soon became a bone of contention. Luther’s scholas- 
ticism found vent in Consubstantiation, which made the 
Church an elevated but scarcely an efficient agent of God. As 
we have seen, Lutheranism showed marked inferiority to Cal- 
vinism as a virile form of Protestantism. Zwingli’s rational- 
ism was at variance with Luther’s mysticism. The German 
Reformer stood for the believer’s privileges through Justifica- 
tion by Faith, and insisted that there was no necessity for a 
visible Head of the Church. The Swiss Reformer maintained 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 349 


that Church and State were one in aim, and would have 
merged both in the State. The former claimed that the New 
Testament sanctioned the Real Presence in the Eucharist; the 
latter that all such allusions were purely metaphorical. Lu- 
ther’s theory submitted the Church to the control of temporal 
princes; Zwingli’s theory saddled their criminal acts upon a 
participating Church. Their differences lay partly in temper- 
ament and partly in circumstances. Luther was conservative, 
suspicious of the Renaissance, always aware of his own past; 
Zwingli was radical, greatly attached to the Renaissance, and 
in a sense, the father of present liberalism. Calvin’s genius 
rose like the eagle above the plain in his doctrine of Predes-, 
tination. But his theory of a Church-State, as exemplified at 
Geneva, soon declined, although it had experimental values 
which greatly accelerated the growth of free States. 

The disagreement noted in these three decisive cases was 
fatal to the unity of sixteenth-century Protestantism. Its 
quarrels involved the nations and multiplied the sects. Ex- 
cessive individualism, as the rebound from an overbearing 
corporate life, produced Nationalism, and Nationalism wid- 
ened the divisions of Protestanism. Erastianism came in to 
give monarchs governance over the now separated Churches. 
They often nominated their chief pastors, and even ratified 
their doctrinal forms. The achievement of a consolidated in- 
ternational Protestantism was postponed for centuries. So 
humiliating a subordination of the spiritual to the temporal 
rule outraged the Communio Sanctorum, ‘‘the company of the 
faithful,’”’ whose members drew apart imto Independency. 
Thus other breaches were made, and the national Churches 
that had defied Rome were themselves defied by a segment of 
their more devout membership. 

The chaos that followed is the most adequate explanation 
of the loss of Protestant authority in international affairs. 
Its inability consisted, not only in its controversial temper, 
but in its unwillingness to ‘‘see life steadily, and see it whole.” 
Its religious revolts against the State were animated by other- 


350 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


worldiness; its conformity was wanting in the historic sense 
of an unbroken stream of human consciousness and effort. 
So it lay, stranded between two extremes. In the process we 
may observe a hesitancy about convictions, a tampering with 
them because of penalties or rewards, and a general absence 
of straight forward dealing in sacred affairs. These charac- 
teristics were most noticeable in State Churches, which were 
in the secular bondage that politics had fastened on them. 
False perspectives, unreal values, the pursuit of minor ends, 
were the outcome of their entombment ‘‘ within the four walls 
of Acts of Parliament.’”’ The ideal of the Ecclesia as forever 
one, holy and indivisible, the creation of God in Christ Jesus, 
withered under the glare of national arrogance and self- 
determination. Old tyrannies were revived by those Church- 
men who worshipped State authority as the Parsees worship 
the sun, without explaining it. The tendency of huge imper- 
sonal organizations to domineer over believers who dared 
to reassert the supremacy of the New Testament Church, 
was constantly exhibited by the State, which appropriated 
many Church rights and privileges. 

The story of Protestant disintegration need not be recited 
at further length. It is now accomplished, and many Protes- 
tants are more deeply attached to their denominations than 
to the Universal Ecclesia. But it has bred in outsiders an 
aloofness which deepens at intervals into contempt. Walter 
Hobhouse declares that thus “the effective force of the 
Church as an instrument for the conversion of the world is half 
paralyzed by its internal incoherence.” 1 Furthermore, the 
Scriptural vision of God’s world-empire has disappeared from 
Protestantism, by reason of the absorbing claims and ecstasies 
of individualistic pieties. These have the detachment from 
the race tragedy of Browning’s ‘Lazarus,’ without his su- 
preme experience.’ A recapitulation against sectarianism 


16 “The Church and the World in Idea and in History,’’ p. 260. 
7 Cf. Frank I. Paradise: ‘‘The Living Church,’’ in ‘‘ The Hibbert Jour- 
nal,” April, 1907. p. 535. 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 351 


charges it with intensifying the Nationalism that prevents the 
peace of Christendom; hindering industrial, economic and so- 
cial progress; failing to furnish society with any impulse or 
pattern for its wider fellowship. It is also accused of stressing 
arbitrary social distinctions, and yielding to State absolutism. 
Whatever may be said for or against the indictment of our 
constitutional defects, those who know Protestantism from 
within will realize how unjust some of these animadversions 
are. In the past, its sons have withstood the State, broken 
the despotism of powerful Monarchs, and organized law- 
ful freedom. Today, multitudes of Protestants realize that 
there is a higher love than love of democracy; a greater com- 
mandment than that of the State; a nobler obedience and a 
purer service than any political rule can rightly demand. 
From the ranks of such men and women our best citizenship 
is recruited. They abound everywhere to identify State and 
Church with the Divine Order, and to idealize both as the 
executants of that Order. The strength they inherit from 
their traditions of truth and justice is not frittered away, as 
some of their critics would have us believe. It is assuming 
new forms in a Protestant Catholicity, that shall reoccupy 
eround too long abandoned to a type of Catholicity which 
they cannot conscientiously accept. 

The movements mentioned here can be regarded as phases 
of one presiding and intelligent evolution, in which the be- 
liefs and institutions that survived its ordeals were preserved 
for further use and benefit. Justifiable reasons for the present 
existence of many sects have vanished. Some were never 
valid; others have become anachronisms; all are subjected to 
the sifting that separates their grain from their chaff. As 
surely as the signs of the sixteenth century pointed to the dis- 
union of the Church, so surely do those of the twentieth cen- 
tury point to the union of all Christian believers. Whatever 
in this history, so multiform and complex, we lament or hail, 
it has a significance arising out of a sovereignty beyond our 
comprehension. Beneath its rough and troubled annals, its 


B1y4 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


conflicts and schisms, its wretched episodes and its thrilling 
heroisms, there ever has been the true union of hearts that 
beat for God’s honor. 

No Fabian tactics can delay the incoming tide of a divine 
purpose which bears Protestantism onward to its future 
Catholicity. But competent leadership is required to guide 
its living forces in their best directions, and to intelligently 
apply them. Those forces are allied with the world’s order 
and security, with the various Church federations that have 
been inaugurated during the past thirty years, with the ad- 
vance of organized knowledge, and with the growing social 
and industrial consciousness of mankind. The revolt against 
the unconditioned Church has happened; the revolt against 
the unconditioned State has begun. The results of these 
movements run concurrently and demand the wisest superin- 
tendence if they are to yield the peaceable fruits of righteous- 
ness.!8 Church and State must reciprocate afresh for the ap- 
proaching internationalism of which Protestant union should 
be the forerunner and the pledge. Its larger denominations 
contribute to the Catholicity we have in mind. They teach 
the lessons of collective responsibility in religious enterprises. 
They show that religious reconstruction is not an easy proc- 
ess because it deals with the most susceptible side of human 
nature. But they inculcate the patience of hope, and stimu- 
late that love which surpasses knowledge. Their adherents 
undertake gigantic tasks for the good of the human race, 
not at ecclesiastical behest, but as the Lord’s freemen. 
In the several Churches, merging as they constantly are by 
gradual degrees into a wider Church, we find the prototypes 
of a living unity, the organs of its expression, and the stand- 
ards of its faith and practice. Yet these must be universally 
understood and accepted if outward unity is to be. Conven- 
tions may assemble and pass resolutions favoring such a unity 
until the crack of doom. But it will be realized in one way 


18 Cf. Charles A. Ellwood: ‘Christianity and Social Science,’’ Chapter 
VIII on ‘‘ The Problem of Leadership,”’ p. 189 ff: 


THE CHALLENGE TO PROTESTANTISM 303 


alone. When all Protestants who confess Christ as Lord 
are willing to abide by what that confession implies as the 
sole standard of Christian discipleship, then, and not till 
then, a renewed and a more glorious Protestantism shall 
prevail. 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The following books are arranged in five divisions, not in any exclusive 
sense but for the sake of convenience. 


I. General 


Ante-Nicene, Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, The 

Ayr, J. C.: A Source Book for Ancient Church History. 

Catholic Encyclopedia, The. 

Eneyclopeedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition. 

GwaTkKIn, H. M., and Wuitnry, J. P. (Editors): The Cambridge 
Medizval History. 

Hastines, James (Editor): Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. 

Mortimer, W., and ScHuBERT, Hans von: A History of the Christian 
Church. 

New International Encyclopedia, The. 

ScHaFrFr, Puitip: History of the Christian Church. 

WaLkKeER, WILLISTON: A History of the Christian Church. 

Warp, A. W., ProtuEro, G. W., Leatuss, 8. (Editors): The Cam- 
bridge Modern History. 


II. Philosophical and Sociological 


Acton, Lorp: The History of Freedom and other Essays. 

Apams, Henry: The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma. 

ApuER, Freirx: An Ethical Philosophy of Life. 

BaGEHOT, WALTER: Physics annd Politics. 

BosaNQuET, BERNARD: The Philosophical Theory of the State. 

Brown, Parup M.: International Society, Its Nature and Interests. 

Brycs, Viscount: International Relations. 

Burgess, J. W.: Political Science and Comparative Constitutional 
Law. 

Bury, J. B.: The Idea of Progress. 

Butter, Nicootas Murray: Building the American Nation. 

Cartyip, R. W., and Caruyie, A. J.: A History of Medimval Politi- 
cal Theory. 

Croce, BENEDETTO: History: Its Theory and Practice. 

Dickinson, Epwin DeWirr: The Equality of States in International 
Law. 


305 


356 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Ettwoop, CuHaries A.: The Reconstruction of Religion. 

Evucken, Rupotr: The Problem of Human Life. 

Fieats, J. N.: The Divine Right of Kings. 

FotuettT, M. P.: The New State. 

FuLuerToNn, W. M.: Problems of Power. 

GippDINGS, FRANKLIN H.: Studies in the Theory of Human Society. 

Grant, Mapison: The Passing of the Great Race. 

GREEN, Tuomas Hit: Principles of Ethical Obligation. 

GREEN, THomas Hii: Prolegomena to Ethics. 

Hapuiey, ArtHuR T.: Economic Problems of Democracy. 

Haut, Toomas C.: History of Ethics within Organized Christianity. 

Hauurpay, Witt1am R.: The Growth of the City State. 

Hatcu, Epwin: The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the 
Christian Church. 

Hearnsuaw, F. J. C. (Editor): The Social and Political Ideas of Some 
Great Medieval Thinkers. 

Henson, H. Henstey: Moral Discipline in the Christian Church. 

HERGENROETHER, CARDINAL: Catholic Church and Christian State. 

HeErtTzuLer, Joyce O.: The History of Utopian Thought. 

Hosuovuse, L. T.: The Elements of Social Justice. 

Hosuouse, L. T.: The Metaphysical Theory of the State. 

Hosnovuss, L. T.: The Rational Good. 

Hosyouse, WaLttTeR: The Church and the. World in Idea and in His- 
tory. 

Hupson, Jay Wiui1am: The Truths we Live By. 

Ince, R. W.: Outspoken Essays, First and Second Series. 

Jacks, L. P.: Realities and Shams. 

Jones, Str Henry: Idealism as a Practical Creed. 

JONES, Str Henry: The Principles of Citizenship. 

Jonres, Str Henry: The Working Faith of the Social Reformer. 

JOSEY, CHARLES Conant: Race and National Solidarity. 

Kipp, B.: The Science of Power. 

Lecxy, W. E. H.: A History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of 
Rationalism in Europe. 

Maing, Sir Henry: Popular Government. 

Marne, Str Henry: Ancient Law. 

MarcHant, Str James (Editor): The Coming Renaissance. 

MaRrTINEAU, JAMES: Types of Ethical Theory. 

MatueEws, SHAILER: The Spiritual Interpretation of History. 

McDovuaati, Witiram: The Group Mind. 

McDovugeatt, WiuutaM: Social Psychology. 

Mortey, Viscount: On Compromise. 

Morey, Viscount: Oracles on Man and Government. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 3o7 


Mortey, Viscount: Politics and History. 

MourruHeaD, J. H. (Editor): Contemporary British Philosophy. 

OPPENHEIM, L.: International Law. 

PaLMER, GEORGE Herpert: Altruism, Its Nature and Varieties. 

PartripGe, G. E.: The Psychology of Nations. 

PENMAN, JOHN Simpson: The Irresistible Movement of Democracy. 

RASHDALL, Hastrnas: Conscience and Christ. 

RaAUSCHENBUSCH, WALTER: Christianizing the Social Order. 

Ritcutz, D. G.: Natural Rights. 

Rosrnson, J. H.: The Mind in the Making. 

Rosrnson, Norman L.: Christian Justice. 

Rogers, ArTHUR Kenyon: English and American Philosophy Since 
1800. 

RussELuL, BERTRAND: Mysticism and Logic. 

Ryan, JoHN A., and Mintuar, M. F. X.: The State and the Church. 

ScHWEITzpHR, ALBERT: The Philosophy of Civilization. Part I, The 
Decay and the Restoration of Civilization; Part II, Civilization 
and Ethics. 

Suaurmori, Kostro: The Principles of the Modern Empire. 

Tawney, R. H.: The Acquisitive Society. 

TayLor, Henry Ossporn: Freedom of the Mind in History. 

TROELTSCH, ERNsT: Protestantism and Progress. 

VIALLATE, ACHILLE: Economic Imperialism. 

Watuace, WitiiaM: Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and 
Kthics. 

Watuace, WiuttamM Kay: The Trend of History. 

WaALLAS, GRAHAM: The Great Society. 

Warp, Harry F.: The New Social Order. 

WESTERMARCH, E.. A.: The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. 

WESTLAKE, JOHN: International Law. 

WiuLoucHsy, W. W.: The Nature of the State. 

Witson, Wooprow: Constitutional Government in the United States. 

Witson, Wooprow: The State: Elements of Historical and Practical 
Politics. 

Wo tre, A. B.: Conservatism, Radicalism, and Scientific Method. 


Ill. Historical 


Acton, Lorp: Historical Essays and Studies. 

Acton, Lorp: Lectures on Modern History. 

ADENEY, WALTER F.: The Greek and Eastern Churches. 
Anaus, 8.: The Environment of Early Christianity. 
Asquitu, Hersert H.: The Genesis of the War. 


358 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


BaiLtey, Cyrrit (Editor): The Legacy of Rome. 

Barrp, H. M.: The Rise of the Huguenots in France. 

Bart_ett, J. V., and Carty 4, A. J.: Christianity in History. 

Bret, W. Ernest: The Early Roman Episcopate. 

Beet, W. ERNEstT: Rise of the Papacy. 

Bryce, Viscount: Modern Democracies. 

Bryce, Viscount: The Holy Roman Empire. 

Butter, Dom CuTHBERT: Benedictine Monarchism. 

CapMAN, S. Parkes: The Three Religious Leaders of Oxford. 

Cuurcu, R. W.: Beginning of the Middle Ages. 

CuarK, Henry W.: History of English Nonconformity. 

Coutton, G. G.: Five Centuries of Religion, Vol. I. 

CREIGHTON, MANDELL: History of the Papacy from the Great Schism 
to the Sack of Rome, 1378-1527. 

Ditu, SAMUEL: Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius. 

Ditut, SamueL: Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western 
Empire. 

Evsesius: Church History, translated by A. C. McGiffert. 

Fiemina, D. H.: The Reformation in Scotland. 

Foakes-JAcKSON, F. J.: An Introduction to the History of Christianity, 
A. D. 590-1314. 

Fowier, W. Warpe: The City-State of the Greeks and Romans. 

GAIRDNER, JAMES: The English Church in the Sixteenth Century. 

GAIRDNER, JAMES: Lollardy and the Reformation. 

GaRDNER, Percy: The Growth of Christianity. 

GaASQuET, CarpinaL F.. A.: The Eve of the Reformation. 

GREEN, JOHN RicuarD: A History of the English People. 

Grecorovius, F.: History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages. 

Gwatkin, H. M.: Early Church History to A. D. 318. 

HarpMay, O., The Ideals of Asceticism. 

HarNnack, ADOLF von: The Mission and Expansion of Christianity. 

Harrison, Frepreric: The Meaning of History. 

Horne, C. Sitvestrer: A Popular History of the Free Churches. 

Hutms, Epwarp M.: The Renaissance, the Protestant Revolution 
and the Catholic Reformation. 

JongEs, Rurus M.: Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries. 

Jones, Rurus M.: Studies in Mystical Religion. 

Kipp, B. J.: A History of the Church to A. D. 461. 

LAGARDE, ANDRE&: The Latin Church in the Middle Ages. 

Lea, H. C.: A History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. 

Lea, H. C.: A History of Auricular Confession and Indulgence in the 
Latin Church. 

Linpsay, T. M.: A History of the Reformation. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 


LivinestoneE, R. W. (Editor): The Legacy of Greece. 

MacLaurin, C.: Post Mortem. 

McGirrert, A. C.: History of Christianity in the Apostolic Age. 

Moztey, J. R.: The Divine Aspect of History. 

Pastor, L.: History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages. 

Piummer, Alfred: The Continental Reformation. 

PonsonBy, ARTHUR: English Diaries. 

PuLLAN, LEIGHTON: Religion since the Reformation. 

Ratny, Ropert: The Ancient Catholic Church. 

RaNKE, L. von: History of the Popes during the Last Four 
Centuries. 

RASHDALL, Hastinas: The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages. 

Sepewick, Henry Dwicut: Ignatius Loyola. 

SEEBOHM, FREDERICK: The Oxford Reformers. 

Srater, Ernest G.: From Augustus to Augustine. 

SMITH, PRESERVED: The Age of the Reformation. 

STAWELL, F. MEAN, and Marvin, F. 8.: The Making of the Western 
Mind. 

Symonps, J. A.: The Catholic Reaction. 

Taytor, Henry Ossporn: The Medieval Mind. 

TayLor, Henry Ossporn: Thought and Expression in the Sixteenth 
Century. 

Watkins, O. D.: The History of Penance. 

Wetts, H. G.: The Outline of History. 

Wuitr, A. D.: The Warfare of Science and Theology. 

Witson, Wooprow: History of the American People. 

Workman, H. B.: Persecution in the Early Church. 

Worxman, H. B.: The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal. 

Workman, H. B.: The Dawn of the Reformation. 

Workman, H. B.: The Foundation of Modern Religion. 


IV. Ecclesiastical 


ALLEN, ALEXANDER V. G.: Christian Institutions. 

Bennett, L. E.: The Realm of God. 

Brown, Cuartes R.: The Larger Faith. 

Brown, Witu1am Apams: The Church in America. 

Brown, Witi1am Apams: Imperialistic Religion and the Religion of 
Democracy. 

CampBELL, THomas J.: The Jesuits, 1534-1921. 

Car.yie, A. J. anpD OrHers: Towards Reunion, 

Cox, W. L. Pater (Editor): Anglican Essays, 

Daz, R. W.: Essays and Addresses, 


360 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


Douurncer, J. J. von: Declarations and Letters on the Vatican De- 
crees. 

Drake, Durant: Shall We Stand by the Church? 

DuBossz, W. P.: The Ecumenical Councils. 

FarrRBAIRN, A. M.: Catholicism, Roman and Anglican. 

Fiaais, J. N.: Churches in the Modern State. 

Forsytu, P. T.: The Church and the Sacraments. 

Gore, CHARLES: The Church and the Ministry. 

GorE, CHARLES (Introduction): The Return of Christendom, by A 
Group of Churchmen. 

Hatcu, Epwin: The Organization of the Early Christian Churches. 

HerapiamM, ArtHuR C.: The Doctrine of the Church and Christian 
Union. 

Henson, H. Henstey: The National Church. 

Hopex1n, Henry T.: The Christian Revolution. 

Hooker, Ricuarp: Ecclesiastical Polity. 

Hort, F. J. A:: The Christian Ecclesia. 

Huss, Jonn: The Church, translated by David 8S. Schaff. 

Innes, A. Taytor: Church and State. 

JosEPH, Oscar L.: The Dynamic Ministry. 

LicHTroor, JoSEPH BarBErR: Ignatius and Polycarp. 

Linpsay, T. M.: The Church and the Ministry in the Early Cen- 
turies. 

Lyncu, FREDERICK (Editor): The Problem of Christian Unity. 

MacGregor, W. M.: Christian Freedom. 

McComas, Henry C.: The Psychology of Religious Sects. 

MANNING, CaRDINAL: The Vatican Decrees and their Bearing on Civil 
Allegiance. 

MickLeM, NATHANIEL, and Moraan, HERBERT: Christ and Caesar. 

MickLteM NaTHANIEL: God’s Freemen. 

NEwMaN, Carprinau: Lectures on Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans 
in Submitting to the Catholic Church. 

Oman, JoHn: The Church and the Divine Order. 

Parks, Lerguton: The Crisis of the Churches. 

Perrin, M. D.: Modernism. 

Rosertson, A.: Regnum Dei. 

Scort, C. A. ANDERSON: The Fellowship of the Spirit. 

Scort, E. F.: The Beginning of the Church. 

Srmpson, P. Carnreaig: Church Principles. 

SépERBLOM, NaTHaNn: Christian Fellowship. 

SPENCER, MALCOLM AND OTHERS: Pathways to Christian Unity. A 
Free Church View. 

Swete, H. B.: The Holy Catholic Church. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 361 


Swete, H. B. (Editor): The Early History of the Church and the 
Ministry. 

TremMPLE, Wiiu1AM: Church and Nation. 

WILLIAMS, CHARLES D.: The Gospel of Fellowship. 


V. Theological 


AxssotTt, Lyman: What Christianity Means to Me. 

Auten, A. V. G.: The Continuity of Christian Thought. 
Atkins, Garus GLENN: Modern Religious Cults and Movements. 
Batrour, ARTHUR J.: Theism and Humanism. 

Batrour, ArTHUR J.: Theism and Thought. 

Burrovaus, E. A.: The Valley of Decision. 

CapMAN, 8. Parkes; Ambassadors of God. 

Capovux, A. T.: Essays in Christian Thinking. 

Carrns, D. 8.: The Reasonableness of the Christian Faith. 
Ciark, Henry W.: Liberal Orthodoxy: A Historical Survey. 
Cuark, WiuxraM N.: An Outline of Christian Theology. 
Davison, W. T. (Editor): The Chief Corner-stone. 

DraRMER, Percy: The Church at Prayer. 

FisHER, GEorGE P.: History of Christian Doctrine. 

ForsytH, P. T.: The Principle of Authority. 

Fospick, Harry E.: Christianity and Progress. 

GALLOWAY, GEorGE: Religion and Modern Thought. 
GARDNER, Percy: The Practical Basis of Christian Belief. 
Guover, T. R.: Progress in Religion to the Christian Era. 
Harnack, ADOLF VON: History of Dogma. 

Heapuiam, ArtHuUR C.: The Life and Teachings of Jesus the Christ. 
Hocxine, Wiuu1amM E.: Human Nature and Its Remaking. 
Hocxine, Witt1am E.: The Meaning of God in Human Experience. 
Horton, Rosert F.: The Mystical Quest of Christ. 

Ince, W. R.: Faith and Its Psychology. 

Jacks, L. P.: Religious Perplexities. 

James, Wittiam: The Varieties of Religious Experience. 
Jones, Sirk Henry: A Faith that Enquires. 

JosEPH, Oscar L.: Freedom and Advance. 

JosepH, Oscar L.: The Faith and the Fellowship. 
Macxintosu, H. R.: The Originality of the Christian Message. 
Macxintosu, H. R.: Some Aspects of Christian Belief. 

Ma pen, R. H.: Problems of the New Testament To-day. 
McConneLL, Francis J.: Public Opinion and Theology. 
McGirrert, A. C.: The God of the Early Christians. 
McGrrrert, A. C.: Protestant Thought before Kant. 


362 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 


McGirrert, A. C.: The Rise of Modern Religious Ideas. 

Moors, EH. C.: History of Christian Thought since Kant. 

Moore, GrorGE Foor: History of Religions. 

Moors, GrorGeE Foot: The Birth and Growth of Religion. 

NEWMAN, CARDINAL: Essay on the Development of Christian Doc- 
trine. 

Oman, JoHN: Grace and Personality. 

Oman, JoHN: The Problem of Faith and Freedom. 

Paterson, W. P.: The Rule of Faith. 

Prapopy, Francis G.: The Christian Life in the Modern World. 

PooLE, REGINALD LANE: Illustrations of the History of Mediaeval 
Thought. 

Pratt, JAMES B.: The Religious Consciousness. 

PrINGLE-PaTtTison, A. SetH: The Idea of God. 

Rawurnson, A. E. J.: Authority and Freedom. 

Roagsrs, T. Guy (Editor): Liberal Evangelicalism: An Interpretation. 

Roycs, Jostan: The Problem of Christianity. 

SaBATIER, AUGUSTE: Religions of Authority and the Religion of the 
Spirit. 

ScHarr, P.: The Creeds of Christendom. 

Scott, E. F.: The Spirit in the New Testament. 

Scort, A. Boyp: Nevertheless We Believe. 

Smpson, J. Y.: Man and the Attainment of Immortality. 

Stmpson, J. Y.: The Spiritual Interpretation of Nature. 

Smitu, Greratp B. (Editor): A Guide to the Study of the Christian 
Religion. 

SoMERVELL, D. C.: A Short History of Our Religion. 

Streeter, B. H. (Editor): Foundations. A Statement of Christian 
Belief in terms of Modern Thought. 

TEMPLE, WiLtu1AM: Mens Creatrix. 

Woop, H. G.: From George Fox to Bertrand Russell. 

Workman, H. B.: Christian Thought to the Reformation. 


INDEX 


Abelard, 94 

Abraham, 18 

Achan, 82 

Acton, Lord, 130, 138, 222, 223f., 
235, 287, 302, 342 

Addison, Joseph, 7 

Akhnaton, 85 

Alaric, 205 

Albertus Magnus, 105, 237 

Albigenses, 109, 230 

Alexander, Popes, II, 212; III, 223, 
247; VI, 124 

Alfred the Great, 139 

Alva, 145 

Ambrosiaster, 262 

American Republic, 113 

American Revolution, 172, 301 

Anabaptists, 283f., 289 

Anarchy, 172 

Angelico, Fra, 240 

Anglo-Catholics, 50 

Anselm, 244 

Apostolic Succession, 202 

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 104, 105, 
110, 225, 231, 234, 287f., 269, 
305, 322 

Arbitration, 33 

Aristides, 163 

Aristotle, 66, 82, 91f., 236, 254 

Armada, Spanish, 133, 298 

Arminians, 135 

Asquith, H. H., 308 

Assyria, 84 

Athanasius, 201, 204, 219 

Attila, 104 

Augsburg Confession, 285, 288 


Augsburg, Diet of, 282 

Augustine, St., 62, 126, 130, 204ff., 
237, 262 

Aurelius, Marcus, 55, 318 

Avignon Schism, 292 


Babylon, 84 

“Babylonish Captivity,” 231 

Bacon, B. W., 191f. 

Bacon, Sir Francis, 135 

Bacon, Roger, 104, 105, 237f. 

Balfour, Earl Arthur J., 24 

Baltimore, Lord, 137ff. 

Baptism, 202 

Barrere, 161 

Bashford, Bishop James W., 345 

Baxter, Richard, 188 

Bede, The Venerable, 94 

Benedict XI, Pope, 231 

Bennett, Arnold, 13 

Bentham, Jeremy, 156 

Bernard, St., 95, 242, 243f., 322 

Bible, The, 129, 237, 257, 259, 281, 
290, 292ff. 

Biology, 154 

Bismarck, Karl Otton von, 308 

Bisson, Mme., 20 

Bolshevism, 37, 161, 174 

Bonaventura, St., 237, 269 

Boniface VIII, Pope, 230f., 247, 279 

Brabant, Sieger de, 232 

Bryce, Viscount James, 251 

Bunyan, John, 294 

Burgess, J. W., 309 

Burke, Edmund, 25, 52, 69, 70, 
105, 139, 141, 143, 300 


363 


364 


Burnet, John, 47 

Burns, Robert, 297 

Butler, Josephine, 345 
Butler, Nicholas Murray, 36 


Cesar, Julius, 20 

Cajetan, Cardinal, 280 

Calhoun, John C., 91 

Calvé, Emma, 13 | ‘ 

Calvin, Johny 63,871) 6119/0120) 
124ff., 188, 232>-257, 259, 268, 
289, 296, 324, 348 

Calvinism, 129, 135, 348 

Canada, 148 

Canon Law, 209 

Canossa, 288 

Capitalism, 24, 26f., 310 

Carleton, Sir Guy, 143 

Carlyle, Thomas, 69 

Cartwright, Thomas, 63, 135 

Casuistry, 245 

Catherine, St., of Siena, 94 

Catholics, Roman, 24, 63, 130, 133, 
292, 340ff. 

Catholicity, 124, 351f. 

Cathulfus, 262 

Cavell, Edith, 45 

Cecil, William, 
134 

Celsus, 185 

Charles the Great, 98ff., 210f., 
251, 269 

Charles I, King of England, 134, 
140, 268 

Charles, Emperors, V, 108, 110, 
282f., 298; VIII, 124 

Charles Martel, 98, 208 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 94, 107 

China, 46, 86 

Chivalry, 102f., 210 

Christianity, 31f., 35, 50, 58, 69, 
177) 185i, 197) 200 eo 9G B04. 
318, 323, 339, 347 


Lord Burleigh, 


INDEX 


Chrysostum, St., 163, 204 

Church, the, 58f., 64, 72, 75, 101, 
Lecture VI, 203, 296, 312, 323f., 
329, 348f. 

Church, Dean R. W., ix, 221 

Cicero, 87 

Cistercians, 244 

City Republics of Italy, 220ff. 

Civilization, 47, 108, 132, 273f., 
299 

Claretie, Jules, 274 

Clement of Rome, 195, 204 

Clement, Popes, V, 231, 
VII, 120 

Cleopatra, 17 

Clive, Baron Robert, 142 

Coke, Sir Edward, 104 

Coleridge, 8S. T., 286 

Colet, Dean, 132 

Collier, S. F., 345 

Comte, Auguste, 171 

Concordat of 1516, 111 

Condorcet, Marquis de, 219 

Conrad IV, Emperor, 248 

Constantine, Emperors, the Great, 
199, 200f., 208; II, 201 

Constitution, American, 145 

Constitution, British, 145 

Controversy, 281 

Cornwallis, Marquis Charles, 141 

Coulton, G. G., 244 

Creighton, Bishop Mandell, 62 

Cromwell, Oliver, 71, 128, 134, 
138, 244 

Cromwell, Thomas, 260, 267 

Crusades, 232, 246, 298 

“Cum Processum,’’ Papal Bull, 254 

Cyprian, St., 194, 204 

Czardom of Russia, 86, 209 


232; 


Damien, Father, 345 
Dante Alighieri, 95, 97, 103, 104, 
235, 247, 248ff., 253, 269 


INDEX 


Daudet, Alphonse, 14 

Davison, Principal W. T., 50 

Deakin, Alfred, 323 

Decius, Emperor, 198 

Decretals, False, 209, 256, 262 

Democracy, 222ff., 234, 289, 294, 
295f., 323, 329, 351 

Democratic Nations, 73, 122, 155, 
175, 301, 329 

Descartes, René, 105, 118, 238 

Despair, 6 

Deuil, Eude de, 243 

Diderot, Denis, 71 

Diocletian, Emperor, 199 

Diognetus, 195 

Divine Right of Kings, 111, 135, 
267, 292, 336 

Divine Will, the, 125 

Dollinger, J. J. von, 342 

Dominic, St., 246 

Dominicans, 244, 245 

Donatists, 206f. 

Dryden, John, 62 

DuBois, Pierre, 232f. 

Duns Scotus, 238 


Eastern Christianity, 279 

Eastern Church, 223, 279f. 
‘Keck, Dr., 281 

Edict of Milan, 200, 202 
Education, 149 

Edward, Kings of England, I, 328; 

II, 328 

Egypt, 84f. 

Eighteenth Amendment, 81 
Eighteenth Century, 67 

Election, Doctrine of, 127 

Eliot, George, 10 

Eliot, Sir John, 104 

Eliott, Baron Heathfield, 143 
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 133 
Ellwood, C. A., 127 

Epicureans, 92 


365 


Epictetus, 55 

Episcopos, 193 

Equality, 72f., 255 

Brasmus; D., 71, 118ff., 123, 131, 
132, 137, 291 

Erastianism, 349 

Eucharist, 202 

Eucken, Rudolf, 36 

Eusebius, 184, 201 


Faith, 6, 9, 18, 30 

Family, the, 82f. 

Fear, 14, 18, 30 

Ferdinand V, Emperor, 108 

Ferdinand, King of Spain, 124 

Feudalism, 100, 102, 108, 210 

Fichte, J. G., 172 

Fisher, Bishop John, 111, 120 

Flotte, Pierre, 230 

Force, 156, 158, 170 

Foscolo, Ugo, 144 

Tox, Charles James, 25, 69, 70, 
141, 143 

Francis I, King of France, 282 

Francis, St., 94f., 104, 220, 241ff., 
322 

Franciscans, 238, 243, 244, 253, 
277 

Franklin, Benjamin, 69, 115 

Frederic, Emperors, I, 220, 221, 
2224 y, II) 2476 TTT, 204 

Frederick, Elector of Saxony, 282, 
284 

Freedom, 137, 274f. 

French Revolution, 69, 145, 161, 
301 

Friars, the, 245, 246, 269 


Galerius, Emperor, 199 

Gandhi, Mohandas K., 346f. 

Gascoigne, Thomas, 260 

George, Kings of England, I, 145, 
328; III, 140 


366 


Gerson, Jean Charlier de, 260 

Ghibellines, 110, 220f., 224, 248f., 
253 

Gibbon, Edward, 138, 88, 219 

Gibbons, Cardinal James, 345 

Giotto, 95, 104 

Gladstone, W. E., 142, 301 

God, 238f. 

Goethe, J. W. von, 53, 103, 119 

Gothic architecture, 96, 107 

Greece, 66f., 84, 86f. 

Green, John Richard, 294 

Green, Thomas Hill, 169f. 

Gregorovius, Ferdinand, 219, 251, 
252 

Gregory, Popes, the Great, 207; 
VI, 211; VII, 211, 219 (see 
Hildebrand); IX, 247, 248 


Grosseteste, Robert, 221, 268, 
276f. 

Guelfs, 110, 220f., 224, 248f., 
253 

Gwatkin, H. M., 196 

Hadrian IV, Pope, 221, 223 

Hamilton, Alexander, 25, 69, 
113 


Hampden, John, 104, 134 

Harcourt, Sir William, 33 

Harding, Warren G., 32, 39 

Harnack, Adolf von, 184, 185 

Harrison, Frederic, 65, 105, 241 

Hazlitt, William, vii 

Headlam, A. C., 185 

Hegel, G. W. F., 167ff., 171 

Hengist, 112 

Henry, Emperors, II, 212; III, 
2112 1V, 216, 220 

Henry, Kings of England, II, 221; 
TIE RLO9 eV TPS 2G eV Lt eet 
131, 188, 266, 267, 282, 328 

Heresy, 246, 256, 284, 287 

Hermann, Bishop of Metz, 233 


INDEX 


Hildebrand, (see Gregory VII,) 71, 
209, 211ff., 222, 224, 230, 233, 
234, 241, 247, 252, 255, 268, 269, 
286, 306, 327 

Hildegard of Bingen, 236, 274 

Hill, David, 345 

History, 48f., 65 

Hobhouse, Walter, 350 

Hohenzollern, 104 

Holy Roman Empire, 210, 229, 
230 


Honorius III, Pope, 248 


Hooker, Richard, 300, 346. 
Horsa, 112 

Hort, F. J. A., 184, 190, 194 
Huguenots, 130 

Humanists, 290, 292 
Humbert, Cardinal, 212, 216 
Huss, John, 261, 283, 293 
Hussites, 109, 247 


Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, 195, 
196, 204 

Ignatius, St., Patriarch, 209 

Imperialism, 37, 108, 202, 222, 
277, 288 

India, 46, 85, 142f., 346 

Industrialism, 24ff. 

Inge, Dean, W. R., 11, 88, 311f. 

Innocent, Popes, III, 209, 241f., 
246, 247, 248, 269, 306; IV, 248, 
276, 279 

Inquisition, the, 246 

Intellectuals, 53ff. 

Internationalism, 32, 329f., 352 

Irenzeus, 204 

Ireton, Henry, 134 

Isabella I, Queen of Spain, 124 


Jacks, L. P., 22 

Jacquerie, 107, 109 

James, Kings of England, I, 135, 
141; II, 140, 141, 268 


INDEX 


Japan, 46, 48, 86 

Jefferson, Thomas, 112, 169, 255 

Jerome, St., 204, 256 

Jesus Christ, 19, 23, 31, 67, 174, 
177f., 186, 188, 196, 203, 313, 
319, 329, 345 

Jesuits, 123, 292, 342 

John, King of England, 110, 140 

John of Jandun, 253f. 

John XXII, Pope, 265, 279 

Johnson, Samuel, 69, 143 

Jones, Sir Henry, 73, 159 

Jonson, Ben, 7 

Jowett, J. H., 34 

Julian the Apostate, Emperor, 202 

Julius II, Pope, 124 

Justification by Faith, 281, 348 


Kant, Immanuel, 172 
Kidd, Benjamin, 15 
Kingdom of God, 74f., 202 
Knights Templar, 232 
Knox, John, 128, 138, 296 
Késtlin, Julius, 274 


Lancelot of the Lake, 103 

Landseer, Sir Edwin H., 26 

Lanfranc, Archbishop, 244 

Language, 293 

Lecky, W. E. H., 44 

Leo, Popes, I, 204; III, 208; IX, 
Zi eX 4981) 282f XTi 344 

Lewis, King of Bavaria, 251, 254 

Licinius, Emperor, 199, 200 

Liberty, 138, 172, 319 

Lightfoot, Bishop J. B., 193, 318 

Lincoln, Abraham, 44, 71 

Locke, John, 71, 138, 172 

Lothair II, King of the Franks, 209 

Louis, Kings of France, IX, St., 
104 Pe 22 oes LOS ee, 
124; XIV, 134, 298 

Love, 23 


367 


Lucretius, 62 

Luther, Martin, 68, 71, 110, 119, 
120, 122ff., 126, 180ff., 1388, 232, 
259, 267f., 276f., 280ff., 293, 296, 
307, 348f. 

Lutheranism, 127, 129, 285, 348 

Lyman, A. J., 22, 345 


Macaulay, T. B., 106, 128, 301 

Machiavelli, 71, 121, 278, 309 

Madison, James, 113 

Manegold of Lautenbach, 234, 255 

Marlborough, John C.; Duke of, 
298 

Marriage laws, 163 

Marshall, John, 69, 105, 113 

Marshall, William, 260 

Marsiglio of Padua, 110, 253ff., 
269 

Mass, the, 321 

Matthew of Paris, 94, 276 

Maurice, Emperor, 208 

McConnell, Bishop Francis J., 27 

Medievalism, 94ff., 108, 212, 
Lecture VII, 236, 269, 275, 297, 
305, 322, 348 

Melanchthon, Philip, 182, 
284f. 

Mercier, Cardinal D. J., 342f. 

Michael III, Emperor, 209 

Middle Class, the, 289 

Militarism, 24, 325f. 

Mill, J. 8., 156, 161 

Millenarianism, 8, 60 

Miltitz, Cardinal Karl von, 281 

Milton, John, 71, 138, 189, 162 

Missionaries, 49 

Modernism, 94, 96, 104, 189, 342 

Mohammedanism, 33, 208, 278, 
346 

Molay, Jacques de, 232 

Monasticism, 208, 210, 212, 239ff., 
244f., 265, 320 


138, 


368 


Montfort, Simon de, 112, 225, 259 

Moravians, 345 

More, Sir Thomas, 111, 120, 182 

Morley, Viscount John, 31, 171, 
288 

Mozley, J. B., 21 

Mysticism, 247 


Napoleon I, 20, 104, 124, 148f., 
298, 306, 328 

Nationalism, 129, 230, Lecture 
VIII, 326ff. 

“Natural rights,’ 301 

Nero, 198 

Newman, Cardinal J. H., 189, 305, 
345 

New Testament, 39, 177, 290, 
307, 318, 329, 348 

Nicea, Council of, 200f. 

Nicetas, Bishop of Remesiana, 184 

Nicholas, Popes, I, 208f.; II, 212 

Nietzsche, F., 178, 297 

Nogaret, Guillaume de, 230f. 





Old Testament, 174 

Oman, John, 299 

Origen, 196, 204, 205 

Otto the Great, Emperor, 211 


Papacy, 99, 128, 1381, 202, 208, 
213ff., 231, 252, 298 

Papalists, 222 

Pascal, Blaise, 17 

Patriotism, 45, 274f. 

Paquist.eo0 wy 0, One l ioe Lue. 
193, 196, 281 

Pearson, Karl, 20 

Peasants’ War, 283 

Penn, William, 137 

Pepin, 98 

Perry, Bliss, 10 

Persecution, 160, 207, 246, 266 

Pessimist, the, 5ff., 14 


INDEX 


Peter, St., 215, 256 

Peter the Great, 280 

Petrarch, 103 

Philip, Kings of France, I, 216; 
II, Augustus, 107; IV, the Fair, 
107, 230f., 232 

Philip IJ, King of Spain, 28, 298 

Pilgrim Fathers, 17, 112, 134ff., 
300 

Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 
25, 69, 105, 141, 148 

Pitt, William, the Younger, 143f. 

Plato, 35, 66, 71, 89, 93, 95, 157f., 
218, 290, 320 

Pliny, 198 

Plummer, Alfred, 131 

Plutarch, 318 

Politics, 324 

Politicians, 37ff., 58 

Polycarp, 195, 204 

Pontius Pilate, 72 

Poole, R. L., 259 

Pragmatism, 132 

Predestination, 126ff., 349 

Principles, 324 

Progress, 49, 74 

Property, 164 

Protestants, 24, 59, 63, 292 

Protestantism, 37, 273ff., 305, 311, 
Lecture IX 

Prussianism, 90 

Puritans, 219, 292, 299f. 

Puritan Revolution, 112, 172, 247 

Pym, John, 104, 134 


Reformation, the, 118, 123, 275ff., 
296 

Religion, 49, 93, 175ff. 

Renaissance, the, 71, 94, 118ff., 
137, 238, 278, 289f., 296, 348 

Renan, Ernest, 14 

Richard IJ, King of England, 267 

Rienzi, Cola di, 253 


INDEX 


Roberts, Richard, 286 
Robespierre, M. M. J., 161 
Robinson, Edwin A., 121 
Robinson, John, 138 

Rodd, Sir J. Rennell, 322f. 
Rodney, Admiral, 143 

Rome, 87f. 

Rousseau, J. J., 71, 148, 1711. 
Russia, 280 


Sacerdotalism, 320f. 

Saintsbury, George, 66 

Savonarola, 278 

Scholasticism, 237, 238f., 290 

Schopenhauer, Arthur, 6 

Scott, Sir Walter, 96, 297 

Sectarianism, 65, 332, 335, 348, 
350f. 

Secularism, 24, 35ff., 39, 74, 333 

Seneca, 87, 318 

Shakespeare, 71, 103, 251 

Skepticism, 247 

Smalley, George W., 142 

Smith, Adam, 143 

Socialism.) 27; 7344/5, 174; 310, 
346 

Sociology, 170f., 293 

Socrates, 66, 91f., 292 

Solomon, King of Hungary, 216 

Solomon, King of Israel, 39 

Somers, Lord, 71, 139 

Sovietism, 37, 347 

Spinoza, Baruch, 118 

Stanley, Dean A. P., ix 

State, the, 37, 64, 72, Lecture ITI, 
122, 150ff., 312, 324 

Stepanoff, 347 

Stephen X, Pope, 212 

Stoics, 92 

Strachey, J. St. L., 174 

Strafford, Thomas W., Earl of, 134 

Svend, King of Denmark, 216 

Symbolism, 320f. 


369 


Tacitus, 199 

Tamerlane, 325 

Taylor, Jeremy, 1388 
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 218 
Tertullian, 196, 204 

Tetzel, 281 


Thackeray, W. M., 141 


Theodosius the Great, Emperor, 
200 

Theology, 61, 126f., 186, 281, 290 

Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, 204 

Thirty Years’ War, 298, 336 

Thirteenth Century, 102, 104ff., 
235 

Thoburn, Bishop James M., 345 

Thomas, Judge W. H., 164 

Thomas of Celano, 269 

Toleration, 138, 161, 199, 246, 
284ff. 

Trajan, Emperor, 198 

Trent, Council of, 288 

Trianfo, Augustine, 233f. 

Troeltsch, Ernst, 125, 127, 312 

Tyler, Wat, 109 

Tyrrell, George, 342 


“Unam Sanctam,”’ Papal Bull, 230 
Universities, 237 
Urban VI, Pope, 264 


Versailles Conference, 32, 37 
Vienna, Conference of, 32 

Virgin Mary, 103 

Voltaire, 71, 219, 229 

“Vox in Excelso,’”’ Papal Bull, 232 
Vulgate, 291 


Waldenses, 247 

Walsingham, Sir Francis, 134 

War, 4, 28ff., 46, 299, 325ff. 

Warham, Archbishop William, 120 

Washington, George, 69, 71, 105, 
113, 141, 142 


370 INDEX 


Washington Conference, 32, 326 

Wealth, 164f. 

Weigall, Arthur, 85 

Wells, H. G., 12 

Wesley, John, 63, 69, 241, 259 

Western Christianity, 275, 279, 
284, 340 

Western Church, 223, 279 

William the Conqueror, 131, 216f. 

William of Ockham, 238, 253, 254 


William I, the Silent, Prince of 
Orange, 141, 145, 307 

Witanagemot, 110 

Wolfe, James, 143 

Workman, H. B., 109, 244 

Wyclif, John, 109, 172, 247, 259, 
260ff., 293 


Zwingli, U., 126, 130, 132, 284, 
289, 348f. 


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